


Knights of the Breakfast Table

by wonderwhatthisbuttondoes



Series: Juke Box Hero [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: 1970's AU, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Historical setting: New York city during the Vietnam War, M/M, Multi, Period Typical Attitudes, Peter is basically Tony's apprentice, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Songfic, Tony drinks, chosen family, street-level superheroes, working class Tony AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-11 21:48:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 59,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16860895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes/pseuds/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes
Summary: Sequel to 'Juke Box Hero'.Two very different soldiers trying to find their way home... and an itsy-bitsy-spider growing up along the way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Universe/setting: Iron Man AU set in early 1970’s New York. Differs from 616 comics canon in that Tony inherited Stark Industries at age 18 rather than 21, and lost the company to Sunset Bain and his cousin Morgan Stark by the time he was 22. All other differences are butterfly-effect collateral from this.

-

The Iron Horse Garage, Greenwich Village NYC, 1971.  10:11 AM.  
  
  
Tony felt the attack coming a half-second too late, and drove his left elbow back with his full strength behind it.  
  
“Uh-!”  It caught Steve fairly in the ribs, and he reacted equally fast, locking Tony’s left arm with his left hand, and catching Tony’s right wrist in his other one.  
  
They both froze.  
  
“…Steve?”  Tony blinked.  
  
“Ah- -yeah,” Steve managed, “-sorry about that.”  
  
“You almost got ventilated with a Phillips screwdriver, you idiot!”  Tony snapped, glaring over his shoulder.  -A black-handled screwdriver and several long machine screws lay on a red cloth over the seat of the motorcycle in front of him.  
  
“I won’t try that again,” Steve promised, loosening his hold.  
  
“…What were you thinking?  What were you -trying- to do?”  Tony demanded, still shaken.  Steve was probably wearing his scale-mail and leather costume under his street clothes, but still…  
  
“This,” Steve said sheepishly, letting go entirely and putting his hands over Tony’s eyes.  
  
Tony reached up and touched the backs of Steve’s hands with his own, then let out a breath.  
  
“…Idiot,” Tony whispered again, and leaned back a little until his shoulders made contact with Steve’s chest.    
  
Steve hugged him, and Tony shut his eyes.  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:40 PM.  
  
  
There was a handwritten sign taped to the freezer door.  
  
_“Out of order,”_  Peter read aloud, amused.  “-Didn’t this thing break on you last August too?”  
  
“It’s old,” Tony shrugged, without looking up from his repulsor-gauntlet wiring.  
  
“No, it’s -jinxed-,” Peter argued, “-every time you build a new suit of armor, the freezer goes out.  It’s like rain and a freshly waxed car…”  
  
“Uh-huh,” Tony replied vaguely, threading a tiny white wire through a metal eyelet.  
  
“I mean seriously… what does you building a new suit of  _armor_ have to do with things  _freezing_?”  Peter added.  
  
Tony looked up.  
  
“Why don’t you tell me?”  He suggested, carefully.  
  
“Well obviously it’s not a normal freezer.  I mean, you don’t keep equipment around that you don’t have a use for, and the only thing in that freezer is a half eaten tub of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream, a couple rolls of film, and a bucket of -batteries-…”  
  
“…Why is the ice cream half-eaten?”  Tony asked, suspiciously.  
  
“I…”  Peter began.  
  
“Peter, you’re a chemist.  Silver Nitrate is terrible for you, and so is Cadmium, Potassium Hydroxide-”  
  
“Bit by radioactive spider, remember?  And if it’s so unsafe, why do -you- keep it in there?”  Peter countered.  
  
“I feed it to people I don’t like,” Tony told him, dryly.  
  
“No you don’t, that was a new container.  I think you keep it in there to make it look like you don’t know what you’re doing, so people won’t ask you what the freezer’s really for.”  
  
“Go on…”  Tony smiled.  
  
“I think it’s a furnace, or some kind of experimental microwave device,” Peter guessed.  
  
“You have a very active imagination,” Tony smirked.  
  
“Okay, then it’s something else…”  Peter translated, undaunted.  “…What would happen if I opened the door?”  
  
“If you could GET it open past the dummy-locks I installed, I’d be taking you to the emergency room,” Tony admitted.  
  
“What would my injuries be?”  Peter asked.  
  
“Shrapnel, among other things.  If you got really lucky, you might get an upgrade out of it,” Tony joked, tapping the glowing front of his arc-reactor.  
  
“Shrapnel,” Peter said, carefully.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You don’t -build- explosive weapons.”  Peter noted.  
  
“No,” Tony agreed.  
  
“-But there’s something metal inside there that would explode if I opened this door,” Peter said, tapping the front of the freezer.  
  
“Yes,” Tony nodded.  
  
“…Kind of like a clay pot shattering in a kiln?”  Peter guessed.  
  
“ _Something_  like that, yeah.”    
  
“-This really IS a freezer, isn’t it?”  Peter realized.  
  
“Of course it’s a freezer,” Tony smirked.  
  
“Okay, what parts of your armor do you have to process cryogenically?”  Peter asked.  
  
Tony grinned, and said nothing.  
  
“Would you like some ice cream?”  Peter suggested, innocently.  
  
“There’s some black cherry you can have in the upstairs freezer,” Tony told him, “-but you  _better_ leave some for me.”  
  
“Roger that, boss,” Peter grinned, and disappeared upstairs.  
  
-  
  
Avengers Tower, NYC.  8:20 AM.  
  
  
“Whose record is this?”  The Scarlet Witch asked, stopping the turntable of the record player in the common room that had been left playing when the mission alarm sounded.  
  
“Tis not mine, of that you may be certain,” Thor said, on his way in to the kitchen.  
  
Quicksilver ran over to read the record’s label momentarily, sniffed dismissively, then vanished elsewhere without comment, satisfied that no-one had purloined one of his records.  
  
“ _’Up on the Roof’_ , by  _The Drifters_?  Going once…?”  Wanda called, holding the record up.  
  
“Ooo, I like that song,” Warbird said, taking the record from her.  
  
“-Just give it back to me when you’re done,” Cap smiled, coming in and pushing down his cowl one-handed.  
  
“This is  _yours_?”  Warbird blinked, “-I thought you didn’t like anything made after…”   
…the rest of us were born…  
  
“Well- -I borrowed it from a friend, actually…”  Steve said, trying to sound casual.  
  
“Please, please tell me that someone was Nick Fury, because I could really use the blackmail material,” Warbird grinned, one eyebrow raised.  
  
“Nope, sorry,” Steve replied, his smile fading a little.  
  
“Too bad,” Warbird decided, setting the record back on the turntable and placing the needle back at the beginning.  
  
“…Yes,” Steve agreed, glancing down at the back of one of his gloves.  
  
_  
’When this old world starts getting me down  
And people are just too much for me to face  
I climb way up to the top of the stairs  
And all my cares just drift right into space  
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be  
And there the world below can’t bother me  
Let me tell you now-‘  
_  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 11:03 PM.  
  
  
Tony flopped onto the two-thirds of the cracked green leather couch that Steve wasn’t occupying, and used the blonde’s jean-covered thigh for a pillow.  
Steve closed his book, set it aside, and looked down at Tony thoughtfully.  
  
“…What?”  Tony asked, looking up at him with a commendably straight face.  
  
Steve sunk his fingers into the back of Tony’s dark hair and kissed him, lifting up slightly.  
  
“Mm…”  Tony’s eyes closed, and one hand curled around the back of Steve’s neck.  
  
Steve broke the kiss after a long moment, then gave him another one just as good.  
Tony’s mind helpfully donated some hints about what to _do_  with flexibility like that…    
When Steve drew back a second time, Tony’s face was lightly flushed, and hungry.  Tony started to sit up, but he felt Steve’s fingers tighten in his hair, -just- enough.  
Leverage.  Angles.  Totally unnoticeable, if he hadn’t tried to move…  
Steve smiled enigmatically, and watched the centers of Tony’s blue-gray eyes darken.  
Then he let go.  
  
Tony’s eyes narrowed, and he moved.  His knees sunk into the couch on either side of Steve’s hips, and he took the blonde’s strong-jawed face in both hands to kiss him from an up-angle.  
Tony felt big hands close around the small of his lower back, and then the unique, bark-like texture of Steve’s mail shirt against his skin, through three layers of cotton.  
There was something deeply sacrilegious about having his dick pressed squarely against where the star was, but Tony decided he could live with it if Steve could.    
Especially since Steve seemed to wa-ohmygod…  
Ass-grab.  Good one.  Fingers gentle and firm, kneading thoughtfully…  
Tony pressed back down into the kiss he’d inadvertently broken, drawing Steve out, demanding -full- participation and making sure the other man had very little time to think.  Just in case.  
  
  
Steve’s hands were at the collar of his green coveralls now, one on each side, pulling Tony down, and forwards.  -And then Steve was moving him  _back_ , and Tony blinked, looking down at him questioningly.  
  
“Can I see it?”  Steve asked quietly, holding the tab of Tony’s coverall zipper between finger and thumb.  
  
“Yeah, go ahead…”  Tony nodded, licking his lips.  
  
Steve unzipped Tony’s coveralls to just above waist-level, and pushed them down off his shoulders.  He lifted the edge of the shirt Tony wore underneath, and there was a brief tangle of clothing as both of them tried to pull it off at once.  Tony won possession by leaning back momentarily, and tossed the shirt over his shoulder without looking at it.   
Steve paused, hands cupped around Tony’s back just beneath his shoulder blades, fair skin painted in pale blue light and shadows.  Steve’s blonde hair fell forward a little from Tony’s angle, and the light from the arc reactor made the very edge of it glow white, like exposed fiber-optic cable.  
Steve looked up, and smiled.  
Tony kissed him.  
One of Steve’s hands closed over the warm disk of the arc, and his fingers brushed the slightly uneven skin around its base.  Tony squirmed a little and caught his breath, breaking the kiss.  
  
“Sensitive?”  Steve asked.  
  
“A- a little, but-”  
  
“Want me to st-”  
  
“NO,” Tony cut him off.  
  
Steve’s breath ghosted across his chest just above the arc, and he brought his right hand into play, doing something to the curve of Tony’s lower back with the ball thumb that-  
  
“Nng…  _Jesus…_ ”  Tony swore, and this time when his hips rocked forwards, he didn’t try to stop them.    
  
Steve’s hands moved together across his back, not quite a tease, but  _mapping_  him somehow.  Finding his landmarks, memorizing the terrain- -and incidentally, pressing them closer together.  Tony’s right hand fisted in the back of Steve’s collar, cloth and cowl alike, and a small frown of concentration settled in between the dark, clean curves of his eyebrows.  
  
  
-Eyebrows like that would need charcoal, Steve thought, automatically.  
Thinking in terms of art had been his way of justifying his thoughts for quite some time, and even now he couldn’t shake it.  Couldn’t fully admit that he wanted to not only look, but touch, and taste…  
Part of his mind wasn’t ready.  Part of his mind was still scared, and if he pulled Tony’s mind apart far enough with his hands, he could watch the other man lose it from a safe distance again, and not think about what it might be like to hold him naked.  
To slide against him, and feel- -that-!  
Steve gripped Tony’s hips in both hands, stilling them.  
  
“…Hnnnh?”  Tony demanded his breathing uneven.  
  
“I- want to try something,” Steve swallowed, eyes still shut.  
  
Tony’s eyes opened, looking down at the other man intently.  
  
“What did- -you have in mind?”  He asked, catching his breath.  
  
“I want to…”  Steve began, and though he managed a wild glance up at Tony’s face for a moment, the rest of that sentence wouldn’t come.  
  
“-Get naked with me?”  Tony prompted helpfully, one end of his mustache quirking up.  
  
“No, I- -not yet.  I want to, uh…”  Steve blushed deeply.  He was getting really, really angry with himself.  
  
Steve’s emotion translated physically into a tightening of his hands and a partial groping of Tony’s ass.  Tony braced his hands on Steve’s shoulders hard, and bit his lower lip for a moment.  
  
“Steve, just- -whatever it is, do it- slow an- and I’ll tell you if I don’t like it, because if you can’t even say it it’s  _got_  to be good, and I- -yeah just… let’s do this,” Tony argued quickly, when he could talk again.  
  
Steve nodded, visibly relieved, and took a breath.  He pulled the zipper of Tony’s green coveralls the rest of the way down, let go of them so they fell to mid-thigh and palmed Tony’s dick through his boxers.  Tony’s fingers tightened abruptly around Steve’s shoulders, and Steve glanced up with concern.  
  
“-M’good,” Tony panted, “-p- -please continue…”  
  
  
Steve palmed him again, and ran his free hand along Tony’s back, returning to familiar territory, then stroking down further.  He ran his thumb across the head cautiously, and felt thin cotton, and firm, living tissue beneath it.  This wasn’t the thickly-sewn zipper of pair of jeans, or the proverbial ‘something in his pocket’, this was -Tony-.  
This was someone just as breakable as he was, just as excited as he was.  
This was a man who  _wanted_  him.  Very, very much.  
Steve was hard too, uncomfortably hot and confined beneath layers of khaki and well-fitting blue leather.  …But seeing Tony like this, touching him and watching his eyes slip closed, lips parting-  
It was okay.  
  
It was fun, and if he was hard enough to feel his own pulse inside his costume, that was okay too.  It was something… he could have.  …Something he could guide Tony’s fingers to, and probably watch the other man’s eyes darken in covetous glee.  
If he could find his courage now, and-  
  
Steve bent his head, and nuzzled Tony through his boxers.  It was a careful movement, all barely-contacting warmth, and the scratch of his own pale five o’clock shadow against thin cotton, and a darkly complex scent that made him harder, and suddenly thirsty.   
Steve swallowed, and lifted the waistband of Tony’s boxers down, careful not to snag him.  That was never fun, and since he knew-  
There.  
  
  
Steve had rarely seen another man’s crotch at close range before, and never when he was allowed to stare openly.  He _could_  chicken out at this point, the way he had once turned down a very interesting offer from Pvt. Finn in Marseilles…  
The scent was stronger now, like clean sweat, and the shadows in concrete-floored boxing-gym locker rooms, and maybe a faint hint of machine oil.  
Steve glanced up, unwittingly breathing lightly across Tony’s skin.  
Tony’s eyes caught Steve’s glance, and held it fast.  Tony was fascinated.  Horrified.  Riveted.  No longer altogether sane, but watching Steve’s explorations of his person as if he couldn’t quite believe what his eyes were seeing.  
Steve’s doubts came back in a rush, and he swallowed, his throat going dry.  
  
Tony reached down, and cupped the side of Steve’s face in his hand.  The light of the arc reactor made him look more than human somehow, like an angel with a strangely misplaced halo.  He brushed Steve’s lips with his thumb, and his face became calm.  Steve’s lips parted, and he licked Tony’s fingerprint.  
Tony’s eyes widened a little, and he caught his breath.  
  
“You- -oh.  I thought you’d want me to-” Tony broke off, and bit the inside of his lip.  
  
“…Would you?”  Steve asked, still watching his face.  
  
_“Yes,”_  Tony admitted, a slight exhalation of air that sounded as if it -felt- good to make.  
  
“I- -need to-” Steve’s words fell apart again.  
  
“-Okay,” Tony nodded quickly, now not sure exactly -what- Steve’s plan was, but having deduced that it involved one or both of them getting a blowjob.  
  
  
Tony was right, and the staring wonder of the moment that he realized Steve was actually serious was something he would never forget.  It wasn’t the slight touch of roughness of as the other man’s cheek brushed his stomach, or the soft touch of lips or tongue, it was Steve’s hair.  That outdated forehead-curl that never seemed to stay combed to the side once he’d put his costume on over it.  …The faint touch of  _that_ swirl of hair, bright as summer wheat straw, against skin Tony hadn’t once thought Steve would want to see, let alone  _taste_ …  
That was when it became real.  
Tony’s stomach clenched a little, and he shivered.  It felt good, just like-  
  
-No.  
  
Tony forced his eyes to stay open, forced himself to watch this, and accept the reality.  
Ca- -no,  _Steve Rogers_  was blowing him.    
And… …not even very  _well_ , but the sight of this beautiful man making the attempt would have been worth it even if it -hadn’t- felt good… which it did.    
  
Tony became aware of the fact that he’d leaned his ass back against Steve’s hands at some point, and that Steve was holding him from falling further backwards without apparent effort.  
Which was extremely hot, but… …damn, Steve was  _really_  bad at this, maybe he should-  …naah.  
Tony slid a hand into Steve’s soft, long-banged hair, and flexed his fingers, smiling.  
  
  
“-You okay?”  Tony asked, hand on Steve’s shoulder.  
  
Steve nodded, and coughed some more, sleeve held across his mouth self-consciously.  
Tony tried desperately to keep a straight face, but his afterglow this time was of the giggly variety, which made that next to impossible.  Recovering, Steve caught sight of Tony’s tremblingly amused expression and groaned, shutting his eyes.  
  
“-That bad?”   
  
“Ah… yeah,” Tony admitted, “-but you didn’t give up, and you looked great doing it,” he assured him.  
  
Steve glanced up dubiously.  Tony kissed him.  
  
Tasting himself on Steve was strange but not unpleasant, a mixture like …hamburgers and raspberry sauce.  Both not bad individually, but he’d never really imagined tasting them  _together_.  Steve was-   
Tony broke the kiss, and looked down at the blonde thoughtfully.  
  
“-You’re braver than I thought,” he realized, aloud.  
  
Steve smiled wryly.  
  
Tony kissed him again, more softly this time.  When the kiss ended, Steve ran a forefinger across the carefully trimmed line of Tony’s mustache.  Tony wiggled it like Samantha on ‘Bewitched’, and grinned.  Steve missed the cultural reference by a mile, but grinned back anyway.  
Tony glanced down at the front of Steve’s pants, then back up.  
  
“…I owe you one, don’t I?”  
  
“I’d say you do,” Steve agreed.  -He would have felt embarrassed to ask for this half an hour ago, but after Tony had all but  _laughed_  at him…   
  
“No time like the present,” Tony suggested.  
  
“No,” Steve smiled, “-there really isn’t.”  
  
  
“-Scoot forward,” Tony instructed, taking a handful of his clothes and moving off the couch.  
  
“Like this?”  Steve asked.  
  
“More… okay,” Tony held up a hand.  He knelt on the bunched fabric of his coveralls just in front of the couch, and ran his hands up Steve’s thighs just because he could.  
  
Steve naturally sat with his knees apart, and Tony had always considered that a promising sign.    
Time to find out if he was right, but Steve was looking a little nervous again.  Tony bit the inside of Steve’s right knee through his pants.  
  
“Hey-!”  Steve glared, surprised.  
  
“Just seeing if you were still awake,” Tony shrugged, unapologetically.  
  
“You’d better not try that elsewhere,” Steve muttered.  
  
“Don’t worry, you’re in good hands,” Tony promised, undoing the first of Steve’s belts.  
  
Steve, in Tony’s considered opinion, wore far too many layers of clothing.  When attacked like a wrapped Christmas present however, those layers yielded.  
Steve caught his breath as Tony released him, but shut his eyes and managed not to lose it.  
  
“Hips up.”  
  
“Hm?”  Steve blinked.  
  
“I have to-”  
  
“-Oh, right.  …Wait, wouldn’t I be on the couch without-” Steve began.  
  
“MY couch, I don’t care,” Tony assured him firmly, working Steve’s double layer of pants down where he wanted them and pushing him back down.  
  
  
Steve’s thighs were thick, powerful in the way a racecar’s engine was, and long only because they were built in proportion to the rest.  The lower edge of Steve’s shirt showed a tantalizing glimpse of -amazingly- good abs when he leaned back, and the scratchy-soft dusting of blonde hairs across his lightly flushed pale skin were barely half a shade darker than the forehead-curl that had so entranced Tony earlier.  
  
“…You aren’t cut,” Tony noted, looking down at Steve’s dick appreciatively.  
  
“I was-” Steve swallowed, “-it, ah- -it grew back.”  
  
Tony took him reverently to hand, and examined the tip more closely.  
  
“Because of the super soldier serum?”  Tony guessed, fascinated.  
  
“U-hmn-” Steve whimpered, nodding.  
  
“Well, this should be interesting…”  Tony smirked, and ran his tongue along the base of the head.    
  
Steve’s right hand clenched into a fist at his side, containing the otherwise dangerous strength of his body.  He shut his eyes, and fell into the sensation blind, trusting the other man to get him where he needed to go.  
  
Tony played with whatever caught his interest, but he didn’t try anything too kinky.  This was about mutual fun, not advanced technical skill that Steve would no doubt attempt to memorize on the fly…  
…The fact that a martial artist as gifted as Steve was probably  _could_  learn things that way lent credence to Tony’s theory that Steve had probably never received a good blowjob before, though he clearly knew what one was supposed to  _look_  like.    
  
  
Steve was a live wire under him, a study in barely-restrained power.  He was improbably clean with a taste of well-kept leather, solid, gorgeous…    
Tony  _pushed_  him, testing the blonde’s reactions, stealing glances upwards from time to time and watching each lick, each smoothly wet shift of his mouth unfold across Steve’s unguarded face.  
  
It was over far too soon for both of them, in a choked exclamation that looked almost painful, and a short snap of Steve’s hips that Tony put a stop to by pinning them down with both hands, -hard-.  Steve slumped back against the couch to catch his breath, and put a hand clumsily onto the back of Tony’s hair.  Tony swallowed carefully, and eased off.  He straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand absently.  
  
Steve’s blue eyes weren’t quite focused yet, but there was something  _in_ them that made Tony stop moving.    
Steve raised Tony’s chin with two fingers, looked straight _into_  him, and put a hand on his shoulder.  Tony looked back at him silently, and had the strangest feeling that he was being …knighted.    
A sudden unorthodox mental picture of King Arthur and Sir Gawain occurred to him, and Tony actually blushed a little.  
  
“Get up,” Steve ordered quietly, smiling down at him.  
  
Tony stood.  
  
Steve took his hand, and pulled him forwards, guiding Tony back across his lap.  
  
Tony sank down against him skin to skin and sighed shakily, off-balance and feet still half-tangled in his loose coveralls.  He was partly hard again and Steve wasn’t, but  _damn_  this position felt good…    
Steve hugged him close, and kissed the side of Tony’s neck just below his ear.  
  
…That felt pretty good too.  
  
-  
  
Central Park, NYC.  2:28 PM.   
  
  
“I got the T-Rex,” Iron Man decided, looking up.  
  
“Go,”   Cap nodded, “-Spider-Man, you’re with me.  Warbird, you’re our eyes in the sky, you and Quicksilver keep any meat-eaters from getting out into the city.  Scarlet Witch, Thor, do something about that time portal, NOW!”    
  
Warbird took off straight up.  Tony and Quicksilver were already gone.  Thor caught Scarlet Witch around the waist in one powerful arm, and threw his hammer deeper into the park.  
  
The Velociraptors crept out from beneath the tree line on their left, and eyed the remaining red and blue humans with interest.  They seemed to have no visible claws or fangs, and the smaller one didn’t seem to have jaws at _all_ …  
  
“Those things are picturing us on a sesame seed bun,” Peter observed, uneasily.  
  
“-See if they’ve got a taste for web,” Cap said with a tight smile, and let fly with his shield.  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 8:31 AM.  
   
  
“Hey Tony,” Peter said, waving a hand in front of Tony’s sunglasses.  
  
“Mrbr… f’koff,” Tony responded from the couch, waving him away.  
  
“Ah.  Late night, huh?”  Peter smirked, “-does this mean I can finish the frozen waffles upstairs?”  
  
“Notta chance.  There’s pancakes,” Tony pointed, without getting up.  
  
“Don’t take this the wrong way boss, but were you still drunk when you made them?  Because after that caper incident, I-” Peter began.  
  
“UPSTAIRS, critic,” Tony growled, flipping him off in the general direction of the kitchen.  
  
“Gee, tell me how you  _really_  feel…”  Peter muttered, trudging upstairs anyway.  
  
He came downstairs half an hour later, after a round of very passable banana-walnut pancakes.  Tony was snoring gently, and he didn’t appear to have moved.    
Peter considered his boss a moment, and decided to leave him alone.  -Those pancakes  _had_  been pretty good.  
  
He appropriated Tony’s (his) battered desk instead, and went over this week’s accounts.    
One of the things that had surprised Peter when he’d first come to work here was how many sidelines Tony maintained in addition to the motorcycle repair shop.  It was a good thing too, or Peter suspected the shop would have gone under long ago.    
There was a ‘Heathcliff Metals’ that sent in checks of varying size and lists of  _‘metals to look out for if your friend happens to acquire them’_ …    
‘Century Cryogenics’, that paid occasional repair bills to someone named Mitch Germaine, who maintained a joint checking account with Tony but didn’t seem to exist aside from this…    
Something about a computer system upstate with a P.O. Box that Peter had  _never_ been able to get the straight story on…  
The list went on and on, and Peter still wasn’t sure Tony was showing him the whole thing.  He’d met a lot of strange people tracking down the names on Tony’s list…  
  
Peter was busy with the books for about an hour, and then he got… bored.  He’d hoped he could talk to Tony about what was going on with Harry, but  _hung over_  his boss was very little good to man or beast.  For one thing, the man smelled like a used bar-mat, and for another he-  
Peter stopped.  
That’s what was off.  
He couldn’t smell much of anything, except maybe… pancakes.  
  
Peter walked up the wall onto the ceiling, and let himself down on a slowly-spun web line right above Tony.  
No.  Tony hardly smelled like booze at all.  …Yet here he was, racked out on the couch  _pretending_ to be hung over.  Curiouser and curiouser.    
Very stealthily, Peter picked off Tony’s sunglasses.    
Nothing.  Asleep.  Peaceful.  Faint shadows under his eyes, but those were just the permanent ones.    
Okay, plan ‘B’.  
  
“Boo.”  
  
Tony woke up with a start, and lashed out with his right hand straight up, palm upwards.  
He missed Peter’s nose by a clean inch and a half, though if he’d been wearing a repulsor gauntlet, Peter would have been history.  
Peter started back slightly, but maintained his balance upside-down.  
Tony sank back down, shut his eyes, and sighed through gritted teeth.  
  
“Good morning, Peter,” he said, in a voice that was dangerously calm.  
  
“-You’re not hung over,” Peter stated, holding the sunglasses out of range pointedly.  
  
Tony smiled then.  It started slow and devious at either corner of his mustache, and spread into a look of such smug complacency that Peter actually retreated up his web line about half a foot.  
  
“No,” Tony agreed, “-I’m not.”  
  
“Can you never, ever smile up at me like that again, and we just, ah, forget this conversation ever happened?”  Peter asked, hopefully.  
  
“Not a  _chance_ ,” Tony grinned.  
  
“-Nuts,” Peter winced.  
  
“Remember that talk we had about why I didn’t want to open the day after Matt and Elektra’s New Year’s party?”  Tony began, mercilessly.  
  
“Ohmygod don’t finish that thought,” Peter pleaded.  
  
“What’s the matter?  I thought you said Elektra was hot…”  Tony teased.  
  
“Yeah, but…”  
  
“Yes, he’s a natural redhead.  Get over it,” Tony said, flatly.  
  
“You’re making my head hurt,” Peter accused, “-on purpose.”  
  
“I’m trying to get you to stop screaming ‘eww, cooties!’ every time I bring gay stuff up, actually,” Tony admitted, relenting.  
  
“Umm… why?”  Peter wanted to know.  
  
“It closes doors, Peter.  The more unusual an occupation is, or the more rules of society you have to break to get into it in the first place, the better the chances are that you had to look at what you -really- wanted instead of just copying everyone else.  And costumed heroes… you follow me?”  
  
“Are you trying to hint that I’m outnumbered, here?”  Peter asked, uneasily.  
  
Tony glanced to the side momentarily, thinking.  
  
“-No.  But by freaking out like a little schoolgirl, you may be making people less likely to work with you without even realizing you’re doing it,” Tony explained.  
  
“That doesn’t mean I have to like-” Peter began.  
  
“No, it doesn’t.”  
  
“Great.  Something else to think deep thoughts about,” Peter said, dubiously.  
  
“Think fast,” Tony advised, dryly.  “-I’m dating Steve, you know.”  
  
“Steve, Steve?”  Peter asked.  
  
“Yes,” Tony sat up, and rested his elbows on his knees.  
  
“Well…”  Peter considered, chin in hand, “-Steve’s not so bad.”  
  
“-My thoughts exactly,” Tony smiled, stretching his arms up over his head.  
  
-  
  
Tony’s kitchen, 9:23 PM.  
  
  
Steve let himself in through the skylight, and dropped lightly onto the worn linoleum floor next to the kitchen table.    
The bedroom door was closed, so Steve knocked.  
  
“Come in,” Tony called through it.  -He’d already seen who his visitor was on the TV in the corner… though since there was no longer anything in front of the motion-detector cameras, it was back to playing channel eleven on mute.  
  
Steve opened the door, and made out Tony stretched out on top of the blankets by the choppy, multicolored light of a cigarette commercial, and the unusually steady glow of the arc reactor.  A round black cable about the thickness of a shading pencil lay against Tony’s chest in a loose curve and disappeared off the far side of the bed.    
  
“Hey,” said Steve, unconsciously lowering his voice as if he was in a library.  
  
“Mmm.  S’good to see you…”  Tony replied, “-put your hand on the bed frame, would ya?”  
  
Steve set his shield down against the bedside table, pulled off his red leather gloves, and touched one of the brass curves of the headboard, grounding himself.  He pushed back the cowl of his costume, and left his gloves on the bedside table.  Tony’s eyes had half closed again, but he opened them when he felt the mattress dip, and smiled.    
  
Steve leaned over and kissed him.    
  
Tony ran his fingers lightly across the scales of Steve’s mail shirt.  At this angle they hung loose, each tiny Duraluminum plate kept from actually pivoting straight downwards by the two scales contacting it from the row above.  
  
“We did good out there today,” Steve said, when the kiss ended.  
  
“Yeah, we did,” Tony agreed.  
  
“Libraries are always special,” Steve reflected, sitting back on an elbow and stroking Tony’s shoulder idly with his fingers. “-They’re like hospitals and post offices-”  
  
“They have flagpoles you can use for flashy aerial attacks?”  Tony teased.  
  
“Come on, you know what I mean…  They’re  _different_.  Those buildings are for everyone, not just a single company or owner,” Steve explained.  
  
“…My father had a library,” Tony said, his mind wandering.  
  
“Oh?  What kind of books?”  Steve asked, carefully.  
  
“Everything, it seemed like,” Tony smiled, “-my mom was into Victorian stuff though, so there was a lot of Bronte sisters and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle…”  
  
“What else?”  Steve asked, hand wandering onto Tony’s chest.  
  
“Technical journals… some books on the history of the French revolution- -those were really dry… and this set of red-covered encyclopedias that went on forever…  I saw my first set of breasts in one of those.”  
  
Steve made a slight choking noise, and glanced down at the sheets.  
  
“Oh don’t give me  _that_ , she was wearing a bra,” Tony laughed.  
  
“What was a picture of a girl in her dainties doing between the pages of an encyclopedia?”  Steve asked, not quite laughing.  
  
“She was IN the encyclopedia, actually,” Tony smiled, “ _-‘A brassiere lifts a Polynesian into the twentieth century.’_   …Which I always thought was unfair, because I’m sure she would’ve looked great without it, and the color didn’t work with her tanned skin tone at all…”  Tony rambled.  
  
“Is this why you like the hula girl song?”  Steve teased.  
  
“Hm,” Tony considered, “-could be.  C’mere, kiss.”  
  
Steve kissed him.    
  
Tony hooked a couple of fingers into the front collar of Steve’s costume as he did so, and gave Steve a dirty look when he tried to sit up.  
  
“I  _know_  what you’re doing, you know.”  
  
“It’s very important to practice resisting interrogations, Captain Stark,” Steve pointed out, virtuously.  
  
“I’ll remember you said that, Private Rogers,” Tony promised.  
  
Steve kissed him again.  Tony let go of his collar.  
  
“What are you reading now?”  Steve asked, sitting back again.  
  
“-Just so you know, I’ve been waiting to tell you about this…”  Tony explained clearly, “-and it has  _nothing_ to do with your little ‘interrogation’ fantasy.”  
  
“I didn’t say-”  
  
“ _Bullshit_ ,” Tony grinned, “-but just for the record, I’ve enjoyed being ‘interrogated’ too.”  
  
Steve glanced over at the plugged-in arc reactor for a moment, then quickly at the back of his hand as it rested against Tony’s chest.  
  
“So, what  _are_  you reading?”  He asked.  
  
“ _Universal Multiplicity and Parallelism in the Modern Age, six-eighty-eight edition_ ,” Tony told him.  
  
“That’s a mouthful.”  
  
“Yeah, you should have seen SHIELD’s title before they made it into an acronym,” Tony snorted, “-but this is Reed Richards’s new book.”  
  
“What’s it -really- about?”  Steve asked.  
  
“Mostly it’s Reed alternately bragging and geeking out about the fact that he can travel to alternate realities,” Tony began derisively, “-but it’s  _fascinating_.  Apparently Reed has dimension travel figured out in at least four different timelines, and get this- -this book wasn’t even written by the Reed Richards from THIS reality… he just edited a copy one of his _alternate_  selves wrote so that it wouldn’t give away too much about the otherrealities it’s been published in.  The Reed we know owns an original thirteen-twenty AND a six-sixteen edition, but damn him he won’t  _share_.  It’s okay though.  I’ve caught a few things he missed while he was editing this one…”  
  
-  
  
Centralia, Pennsylvania, 10:27 AM.  
  
  
“What IS this place…?”  Peter breathed, staring out at the deserted town.  A thin layer of smoke seemed to be everywhere, lingering and turning the horizon into a half-guessed object.    
  
“It’s called Centralia.  There’s a coal vein under the town that caught fire back in sixty two, and it’s still burning,” Iron Man explained in his rough, mechanical voice.    
  
“Ah… excuse me?” Peter stared.  
  
“-Put your mask on,” Iron Man ordered.  
  
Peter fitted his rebreather into place, and pulled his cloth Spider-Man mask back down over it.  Peter’s spider-sense was going crazy, but then, he already knew there was something wrong out there…  
  
Iron Man opened a panel in the red armor covering his left forearm, flipped two toggle switches, and slapped it shut.  The unibeam projector on his chest crackled for a moment, then subsided to a steady, dangerous glow.  
  
They exited the chopper one by one, half the often-disavowed New York hero underground called out and mobilized in this, the East Coast’s darkest hour.  
Spider Man, Misty Knight, Iron Man, Elektra, Power Man, Iron Fist, Hawkeye…  
Tony frowned for a moment.  
Something was obvious.  Something big.  Something he should have seen earlier…  
!  
Tony took two steps back, and closed an armored fist around the barrel of the helicopter’s fifty-cal door gun.  
  
“Come on Iron Man,” the copilot yelled back at him, “-we’ve gotta go!  The Lava Men were seen due west of-“  
  
“The hell they were!”  Iron Man cut him off, speaking both loudly enough to be heard over the idling rotors and directly onto the helicopter’s designated radio frequency.  
  
“WHAT?”  Hawkeye demanded.  
  
“It’s a setup,” Iron Man yelled bluntly, “-everybody back on the bus!  NOW!”  
  
“You’re wrong, Iron Man!  You’re abandoning-” the copilot began.  
  
Nobody was listening, and half the people on the ground were already racing back for the chopper.  
Iron Man heard the pilot telling the door-gunner to fire over his helmet radio, and knew that he’d been right.  
  
He wrenched the fifty-cal’s gun barrel down like a licorice twist before the gunner had time to decide whether to act on the illegal order.  
He stared the gunner in the face, and turned up all the indicator lights in his helmet for a moment, making the eye slits in his face-plate appear to flash white.  The gunner put his hands up, and paled.  
  
“Smart move,” Iron Man told him.  
  
By now almost everyone was aboard, and Power Man and Elektra were up front keeping an eye on the now thoroughly cowed flight crew.  
The empty town outside the helicopter was still unchanged, ominously peaceful like the moment before a dream turned into a nightmare.  
Tony swung aboard last, and sat in the open doorway as the chopper lifted off, one boot braced on the helicopter skid outside.  
  
  
Suddenly, his radar beeped a warning.  
The pilots saw it too, and began screaming into their headsets about friendly fire, and standing down.  The jets didn’t change course.  
Now that they were all necessarily on the same team, the helicopter’s handling improved remarkably.  They couldn’t outrace the two fighter jets that were bearing down on them, but Hawkeye made things unpleasant for the jets with flare arrows, and Iron Man fired a canister of chaff at them.  Some of the shredded metal got sucked into the lead jet’s starboard engine, which instantly died in a stalled-out burst of thick black smoke, and forced him to abandon the chase.  
The second one was still gaining, but-  
  
There was a sudden flash in the smoggy reek behind them, then half a heartbeat later a deep, shattering boom, and a bone-jarring shockwave.    
Centralia, Pennsylvania had become a gaping hole into hell.  
  
The Helicopter was thrown forwards by the blast, and it pin-wheeled in midair for a few seconds before the pilots’ regained control.  Hawkeye shut his eyes tight, gripped the overhead bar, and put his free hand over his mouth quickly.  
Then it was over, and the silence was deafening over the steady beat of the rotors overhead.  
  
  
Tony looked his shaken team over.  
All brave, all good men and women with undeniable talents and powers, but none of them with the power to survive the blast of a fuel/air bomb and the long minutes without oxygen until the air cleared afterwards.  …If it ever -would- have cleared, in Centralia.  
Every one of these heroes had had a run-in with the law, or had a reputation for ‘authority issues’.  And of them all, only Iron Man could fly…  
_  
Casualties of the Centralia explosion._  
Another sad statistic that whoever had paid for the gas in this helicopter could have told Cap and the rest of the ‘law-abiding’ heroes with a straight face…    
And gotten  _away_  with it.  
  
Tony felt cold, and sick.  He gripped the edge of the open door hard enough to squeeze the shape of his armored fingers into the metal, and focused on the anger he felt building.  
Somebody- -and he would find out who- -had tried to kill his team.    
His eyes flicked to Peter.  
His -family-.  
  
“Hey boss-?”  Peter said, hesitantly.  
  
Tony blinked.  
  
“Yeah, what is it?”  
  
“Aren’t you going to do anything about him?”  Peter pointed out the open doorway towards a tiny triangular shape caught in a flat spin.  Both the jet’s engines were dead.    
  
Tony was surprised he hadn’t spotted it earlier himself, but he also had to admit privately that he’d rather let the bastard fall.  
…But saving one of the pilots who had tried to shoot them down would be an excellent way to start countering whatever cock-and-bull story the powers that be in Washington were doubtless cooking up for their unwelcome return.  He couldn’t do anything less, really.  …Not in front of Peter.  
  
“Good eye,” Iron Man said shortly, and leapt out of the open helicopter door, firing his boot-jets.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 1950's-era encyclopedia set with the condescendingly-captioned pic of a Polynesian girl was a real thing, unfortunately.
> 
> The pre-bombing version of Centralia, Pennsylvania is real too, and /to this day/ the coal vein under the town is still on fire.


	2. Chapter 2

-

Times Square, NYC, 2:40 PM (same day as the Centralia bombing).  
  
  
Most of the time, Steve walked like a normal man.  
On a perfect sheet of slippery glare ice though, he  _still_  walked like a normal man, while everyone else was either skating or simply trying to remain upright.  Steve walked past them like a ghost, like some strange and terrible apparition of vengeance, to whom the principles of shear, gravity, and hydrodynamics simply did not apply.  
  
General Dunn’s national guardsmen saluted him, and he saluted them back.  The few SHIELD agents did not salute, but they let him pass unchallenged, and seemed to draw themselves up a little as he walked by.  
Colonel Fury was looking over the map on General Dunn’s folding table with disapprobation and a thick red grease pencil.  Dum-dum Dugan was relaying orders to someone across the river over his radio.  
  
“Colonel Fury?”  Steve said, crisply.  
  
“Whaddya got, Cap?”  Fury asked around his cigar, without looking up.  
  
“Did you have anything to do with Centralia?”  Steve demanded.  
  
Fury looked up, and met his eyes levelly.  
  
“I sent the team in,” Fury acknowledged, “-but when I find out who was behind that bomb, I promise I’ll save ya a piece.”  
  
“Yes.  Or.  No,” Steve asked again, coldly.  
  
“NO, goddammit, I wouldn’t have BOTCHED the job!  Now get your flag unwound and tell me what that magma dragon did ta to Wall Street!”  Fury barked.  
  
Steve watched the older man’s eyes seethe for a moment longer, then nodded once and replied.  
  
“Massive structural damage, mostly on the first and second floor levels facing the street.  I don’t know if they will hold long enough to be repaired, but they’ve all been evacuated…  and Iron Man is there trying to stabilize them now.”  
  
“…Iron Man, huh?”  Fury said, sounding almost bemused, “-he the only one that volunteered ta come back?”  
  
“No, Colonel, they all did.  I re-distributed the members of Iron Man’s team where I felt they could do the most good for the rescue effort,” Steve explained.   
  
Fury stared back at Steve across the table, and held his well-chewed cigar in the fingers of his right hand thoughtfully.  
  
“So what you’re tellin’ me is… you mixed up his capes with mine, an’ planted ‘em on the most news-worthy bits of collateral you could find?”  
  
“Yes sir,” Steve replied, flatly.  
  
“You missed your callin’, Rogers,” Fury said grudgingly, biting his cigar again, “-but you do realize you just handed this country a PR nightmare, right?”  
  
“You’ll have plenty of help tracking down the perpetrators, Colonel,” Steve promised, “-and once they’ve been brought to justice, I’m sure the papers will find something else to talk about.”  
  
Fury glared at him for a moment longer.  
  
“All right, get your butt up to the theater district.  One of those top-balcony things caved in, and-”  
  
Steve paused, one hand to the small wing by his right ear.  
  
“Yes?… he’s right here… okay… are you sure?… yeah, I’ll ask him.”  
  
“What  _now_?”  Fury demanded.  
  
“That was Iron Man.  He’s pretty sure he can stabilize the damage to the buildings on Wall Street, but he says he’ll need to break down the Manhattan Bridge for spare parts.”  
  
“WHAT?!”  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 7:55 AM (next day).  
  
  
Tony dropped his helmet onto the floor with a spinning crash and shoved the couch out of the way a little too hard, adding yet another rip to the green leather as it struck the corner of a bench-vice against the opposite wall.  His fingers fumbled with the catch of his red breastplate, and he swore, putting one armored hand against the wall as his vision tunneled momentarily.      
Pain came and went in clenching waves throughout his chest; he could almost -see- it spreading out from the unbalanced arc reactor like the hard green rings of sonar…  
  
Tony took a breath, forcibly, and slid down the wall to his knees on the cool concrete floor.  The rear edges of his leg-armor dug into the backs of his knees at this angle, but he could barely even feel it, reaching determinedly into a hinged matte-black plate on the back of the jukebox.  His fingers felt heavy.  Numb.  He found the end of the power cord he needed more from memory than anything else, and half-turned so he could lean back against the wall.  
Tony raised the plug, and held it at the entrance of the arc’s left power socket.  He took two quick deep breaths; eyes wide open and focused on the garage door, and plugged in.  
  
A sudden, white-hot spark that seemed to sting more than burn, and foreign power flowed into him in a steady, soothing pulse.  He always thought of it as being cool somehow, like sherbert or a glass pitcher of ice water with thin rings of peeled, sliced cucumber.  
Tony sat for long minutes, staring out at nothing.  He flexed his hands slowly within his gauntlets, and listened to the notes of the metal, the familiar felt-but-unheard clicks, the low whirr of the barely-actuating servos that he knew inside-out…  Tony’s eyes paused on the refrigerator once or twice, but they didn’t linger there.  He didn’t need a drink  _that_ badly.   
Minutes became half an hour, and Tony felt a little better.  
He ran a hand back through the sweaty wreck of his hair, and sighed.  
Please, please let this be enough.  
  
Tony unplugged the power cable, and took a breath.  Two.  …And then the first edge of pain began to return.  
“S- shit…”  Tony shuddered, more from fear than pain this time.  
THIS, he would need a drink for.  
Tony got up, forcing himself to walk steadily, and took a half-finished bottle of Jack from the second shelf.  He unscrewed the black cap with his fingers, and took a long swallow.  
Tony brought the bottle back over to the jukebox with him, his metallic boot steps steadier now.   
He pressed ‘C-4-PLAY’ on the jukebox’s selector keypad, and waited.  
 _  
‘Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,  
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to-’  
_  
Tony sat back down on the smooth concrete floor beside the jukebox, and leaned his head back against the dented wall, shutting his eyes for a moment.    
 _  
‘Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,  
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you-’  
_  
He licked his lips, put the bottle down on the floor to his left, then reached back into the back of the jukebox for a black rectangular device about the size and shape of a lunchbox.  It looked like a large multimeter, except that no multimeter he’d ever seen used test leads as thick as the red and black plugs that lay coiled on top of this one.  There was a large red button on top of the device too, and Tony’s eyes flicked over it nervously as he unrolled the twin leads.  
 _  
‘Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand,  
Vanished from my hand,  
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping-’_  
  
He set all the joints of his armor except for the ones controlling his right arm to ‘lock’ mode, and unplugged his armor’s main power connector from the right hand socket of the arc reactor.  The internal power died with a whisper, and Tony was alone.  He could hear his increasingly ragged breathing more clearly now, and his chest was really beginning to hurt…  
  
 _‘My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet,  
I have no one to meet  
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming-’_  
  
Tony connected the thick red and black cables methodically, one on the left lower socket of the arc in his chest, and one on the right.    
  
 _‘Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,  
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.  
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,  
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you-’_  
  
He hit the round red button on top of the black box with his palm- -it was designed to take such abuse- -and shut his eyes, swallowing.  
 _  
‘-Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship  
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip  
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my b-’  
_  
Tony’s mind disappeared in a sheet of white flame as the high-voltage charge hit him, and he screamed.  
 _  
‘-Spell my way,  
I promise to go under it.  
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me-’  
_  
Minutes…  
Hours…?  
… _Seconds_ , Tony’s reluctantly returning thoughts assured him.  He remembered to breathe with a sudden gasp and tasted blood from where he’d bitten his lip.  He probed the damage with the tip of his tongue.  It wasn’t deep.  
Tony tore out the thick-wired red and black leads with a sob, and swore, rubbing his face with the metal fingers of the one hand he could move.  
Time to fix that.  
He plugged his armor’s power connecter back in, and unlocked the joints of his suit.  Tony slumped against the wall, head down.  The whole center of his chest felt tender, like a deep-tissue sunburn.   
…It hadn’t felt this bad when Steve had shocked him back, Tony thought frowning.    
He took off his red gauntlets one by one and let them fall, dead weight.  
Tony took up the bottle of Jack with a hand that shook, and brought it to his lips.  
 _  
‘-Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun,  
It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run  
And but for the sky there are no fences facin-’_  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 10:20 AM (same day).  
  
  
Steve left his bike, and pounded on the roll-down garage door with the side of his fist.  
  
“TONY!”  
  
There was a faint crash inside the garage, then-  
  
“…Hangonna second.”  
  
“Tony?  Are you all right?”  Steve called through the door.  
  
“Oh.  Yeah, I, uh… I’m fine…”  
  
There was a rattling noise as Tony tried to unhook the locking chain.    
Steve waited.  
  
“Why didn’t you answer your radio when I called earlier?”  Steve asked.  
  
“That- -that was you?”  The chain stopped rattling, “-jeez, I’m sorry… I- -guess I was in the can or summthin’…”  
  
“Tony, please open this door.”  
  
“Yeah, it seems ta be stuck.  …I’m gonna go get a- -torch,” Tony decided, his voice moving away.   
  
“Never mind, I’ll come down through the skylight and help you fix it,” Steve promised.  
  
“No, no, I’ve got this…”  Tony assured him, rummaging noisily in the back.  
  
Steve darted into the alleyway beside the garage, and up the fire escape of the building next door to the rooftops.  Down in the garage, he found Tony looking thoughtfully at a stilled clock sitting on the same shelf as the striker for his propane torch.  
  
“I’d forgotten I had this…”  Tony said.  
  
Steve’s eyes took in the office swivel-chair out in the middle of the oil-stained concrete floor, and the pieces of Tony’s red and gold armor scattered on the ground by the pulled-out jukebox.  He smelled whiskey, and without looking, Steve knew that there would be nothing wrong with the garage door.  
Then again… after a day like the one they’d had yesterday,  _any_  man might drink.  
  
“Tony,” he said, putting a hand on the other man’s bare shoulder.  
  
“…The guy who dropped it off never-” Tony blinked and broke off, turning, “-yeah?”    
  
“You scared the hell out of me,” Steve said simply, and pulled him into a hug.  “-When you didn’t answer your radio- …I thought you were dead.”  
  
“-M’sorry…”  Tony took a few deep breaths against the collar of Steve’s long tan trench coat, and started to cry.  
  
That pretty much compounded the list of things he hadn’t meant for Steve to walk in on, but it didn’t matter now anyway…  
  
“I was there-” Tony gulped, “-and I thought you’d- -but then the army engineer- -guys, they dropped a beam, and I had to catch it, and I- -was already low on power, so I came back to- and I…”  Tony trailed off uncomfortably, and swallowed, “…yeah.”  
  
“I heard about that,” Steve said, rubbing the back of Tony’s neck with the gloved fingers of his right hand.  
  
“Where-” Tony sniffed, looking up, “-where’s Spider?”  
  
“I sent him home with Luke and Danny hours ago.”  
  
Tony snorted abruptly, and dissolved into a helpless giggling fit.  
  
“-What?”  Steve asked, looking into his face with concern.  
  
“Nothing, I- -I’m sure Peter’s safe,” Tony managed, then cracked up again and added, “-I jus’ hope he remembers some advice I gave ‘im…”  
  
Steve looked dubious, but let it go.  
  
“You’re cold,” he frowned instead, rubbing the muscles of Tony’s upper arm.  
  
“-I don’ feel cold,” Tony noted, snuggling against the front of Steve’s coat.  
  
“That’s because you’re drunk,” Steve told him dryly, “-but you’re standing in your underwear on a cold concrete floor, and its forty degrees out.”  
  
“Steeve-?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“…Will you go to bed with me?”  Tony asked, smiling a little and plucking at one of the large flat buttons on Steve’s coat.  
  
“I think you should sober up first,” Steve decided, and gave him a frustratingly chaste kiss.  
  
“I… thought you might say that,” Tony sighed, and dropped his forehead against Steve’s broad shoulder, eyes closed.  “…Really would make me feel better, though…”  
  
Steve stroked the back of Tony’s dark hair gently, and caught one of Tony’s hands fumbling with the belt-buckle of his trench coat as if of its   
own accord.  
Steve gave him a  _look_ , and disengaged the wandering fingers.  Tony sighed again, and glanced down.  
  
“Tony, as long as you’re feeling no pain- -I could really hurt you,” Steve reminded him, evasively.  
  
“Hm-mm,” Tony shook his head, certain.  “…Never hurts when you do it, Steve.  You’re always- …so careful with me.  Feels like… Feels like flying,” Tony sighed, shutting his eyes and resting his chin on Steve’s shoulder “-feels… you feel  _so good_ …” his fingers flexed against the material of Steve’s lapel.  
  
Steve cleared his throat a little, reddening.  
  
“You should go clean up upstairs,” he said, letting go and taking Tony’s arm instead.  
  
“Wait, wait, wait,  _armor_ …”  Tony protested, pointing over towards the jukebox.  
  
“I’ll come back down and get it as soon as you’re in bed,” Steve promised.  
  
“No, tha’s not-” Tony began, trying to pull his arm free, “-leggo ‘a me…  I have to do this.”   
  
“All right,” Steve said, gauging the dogged look in Tony’s eyes.  
  
Tony rubbed his arm absently when Steve let go, frowning.  Steve tensed and glanced down when Tony’s fingers fell away from the spot, but there was nothing there to see.  Steve relaxed uneasily.  
  
Tony gathered the sections of his armor slowly together, then leaned an arm on the jukebox and pushed three buttons on the selector keypad.  
Unlike some jukeboxes, this one would change records every time a new combination was pushed regardless of whether the old song was finished or not…  -which was fortunate, because Tony played the beginnings of  _‘What’s Going On’_ ,  _‘Immigrant Song’_ ,  _‘My Boy’_ ,  _‘Break on Through’_ -  
  
“…Piece a’shit…” he muttered.  
  
- _‘Ruby Tuesday’_ ,  _‘Immigrant Song’_ ,  _‘Immigrant Song’_  AGAIN…    
Tony entered the rest of the code with his eyes shut, and finally got it right.  
The front of the jukebox split apart obediently on its three hinges as  _‘Immigrant Song’_  continued to play, and Tony crammed all the pieces of his armor inside.  All except for…  
  
“Steve.  -Have you seen my helmet?  ‘S not here.”  
  
Steve unfolded his arms and came over- -he’d been hanging back from what looked like a very private ritual- -to help Tony look.  He didn’t find the helmet, but he did see something that looked disturbingly like a remote bomb detonator.  
  
“What’s this for?”  Steve asked quickly, pointing out the black, boxy device on the floor without touching it, “-I don’t remember seeing it here before.”  
  
Tony looked up from his search beneath the couch cushions with annoyance, and froze for a moment, paling visibly.  
  
“That’s a-” he licked his dry lips nervously, “-high-voltage circuit breaker test module.  Box.”  
  
“Where should I-“  
  
“Just don’t fuck with it okay?!”  Tony snapped, looking away.  
  
Steve frowned at him sidelong, but stepped back from the sinister-looking device.  He examined the way Tony’s armor was piled inside the jukebox.  …Then he smiled, and began taking it out again.  The armor hadn’t fit quite right in the lower compartment because the helmet, which normally had the smaller top compartment to itself, had been crammed in at the back of the lower one.    
…Where the actual _records_  went in this jukebox, Steve hadn’t a clue.  
He re-packed the lower half of the jukebox with quick efficiency, then stood up, helmet in hand.  
  
“-Tony.”  
  
“Oh-!”  Tony saw his helmet, and the tension in his face melted into a grateful smile, “-you found it- -that’s _terrific_ … thank you.”  Tony took the helmet from him, “-seriously, Steven.  Thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome, Tony,” Steve replied, with a tired smile.  
  
-  
  
Tony’s bedroom, 8:12 PM (same day).  
  
  
Awakening in the dark, Tony felt warmth against the side of his cheek.  
He explored it with his fingers.  Arm… Elbow… fingers…  And deep, quiet breathing from somewhere behind him, that could only be Steve.  
Tony smiled faintly.  
He stretched his neck experimentally, and winced.  That didn’t feel right.  Painfully sore like armor bruising, maybe something worse.  But Steve had never-  
A slight twinge in the muscles around the arc reactor in his chest brought Tony’s memory flooding back in a wave that left him momentarily nauseous.  
  
He set his jaw, and breathed through his nose for a while, eyes tight shut.  
The two impressions, the two sets of possibilities in his mind warred for a moment.  Steve had come over, that was obvious.  But he’d had to do one of those horrible re-starts, and then gotten drunk, how…  
Steve had come over  _afterwards_?  
Oh, god.    
Steve was bound to have found out what a mess he was sooner or later, but like -this-?  And  _now_ , when Steve would feel honor-bound to stay at the garage with him anyway because of that Centralia thing?  
  
-Fuck-.  
  
Tony sighed, and ran a fingertip wistfully along a line of muscle in Steve’s forearm.  
He lifted his face off of Steve’s arm carefully and sat, up, putting his feet on the floor.  Hm.  Still wearing his boxers from the day before.  Never a good sign.    
  
Tony rubbed his face with one hand, and frowned.  His head was definitely in pain, but not the four-alarm god-awful migraine that re-setting and getting trashed usually gave him.  Huh.  
He looked back at the long, bulky silhouette in the bed behind him, and smiled wryly.  
  
-  
  
Tony made his way into the kitchen, finally found the light switch, and started some coffee brewing.  …Even the first  _fumes_  made him feel better.  He turned to sit down at the kitchen table, and stopped, staring stupidly.  Sitting in the center of the otherwise empty tabletop, there was a ring.  Tony’s thoughts flicked uneasily to Reed Richards’s book about parallel universes for a moment… and then his reawakening mind recognized it.    
  
It was his signet ring, the one he’d inherited from his father.  Gold with a dark red stone, and the capitol letter ‘S’.    
Tony smiled, and picked it up between finger and thumb.  Still bright, after all these years.  The yellow metal was covered with a coating of minute scratches, and the old-fashioned styling felt heavy and solid in his hand.  Tony didn’t have a pocket at the moment, so he put it on his right ring finger.  
  
How had the ring gotten onto the kitchen table in the first place, though?    
Tony spotted a coffee cup in the sink, and sniffed it.  Something with chicken.  He didn’t remember drinking that, and obviously Steve had put the cup in there… had they been talking about the ring last night?  Had he, on top of everything  _else_  he’d done, told Steve about his parents, and losing Stark Industries to his cousin Morgan, and Sunset Bain?  
In German, ‘morgen’ meant ‘morning’.  ‘Morning and Sunset’, so very cute.  The ‘Bain’ of Tony’s existence… though that was her maiden name now.  
  
Poor Zachary.  The kid deserved better parents than those two, even if there had been a certain clannish satisfaction in watching Morgan do something right for a change, at Sunset Bain’s expense…  
Had he told Steve the ‘Morgan/morning’ joke, Tony wondered, or had Steve have picked up on it on his own?    
Probably the latter.  Steve was smart as hell, and he spoke both German and French.  
  
Tony poured his coffee, and the underside of the gold band on his finger clinked quietly against the ceramic mug’s handle.    
Stark had been a good name to have when Tony’s father had given it to him, and wearing his signet ring again made it feel just a little bit cleaner.  
  
-  
  
Tony’s kitchen, 8:41 PM (same day).  
  
  
Steve was standing in the open doorway.    
How long he had been there, quietly observing Tony like a lion on the African veldt, Tony had no idea.   
Nobody that big should be able to move that silently.  
  
“Hey,” Tony said, raising his coffee cup a little and trying desperately to read the expression on the blonde’s face.  
  
“Good morning,” Steve said, padding in and filling a coffee cup from the pot Tony had brewed earlier.    
  
Tony traced the cut on his lip nervously with the tip of his tongue.  
Steve sat down at the table across from him, steaming coffee cup almost hidden behind the circle of his fingers.    
  
“So,” he said, picking up Tony’s right hand and looking at the ring, “-that is yours.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s- -it was my father’s,” Tony explained.  
  
“Good.  I, uh… I found it when I was putting the couch cushions back,” Steve said, running a hand through his own sleep-spiked hair.  
  
Both of them were happier to look down at the ring than make eye contact right now.  
  
“…You cleaned up downstairs?”  Tony blinked, looking up anyway.  
  
“Everything except for the broken bottle by the foot of the stairs.  That sir, you clean up yourself,” Steve told him.  
  
“-Of course,” Tony’s gaze dropped again, and he withdrew his hand from Steve’s.  “…Listen Steve, about this morning-”  
  
“It’s been a rough day and a half,” Steve cut him off, reclaiming Tony’s hand, “-and I think I know what that high voltage box downstairs is for anyway.”  
  
Tony caught his breath, but he couldn’t honestly say he was surprised that Steve had figured it out.  
  
“What do you think?”  Tony asked, finally.  
  
“I think you need a spotter,” Steve told him frankly.  “-I also think you should re-design that box of yours, because if I heard you right last night, it’s designed to blow out weak  _circuit breakers_ , not jump-start something as sophisticated as the arc.”  
  
“You may have something there…”  Tony admitted thoughtfully, not really having heard the part about using a spotter.  
  
“-Later,” Steve smiled, standing, “-come back to bed and watch the news with me.  We’re in it.”  
  
  
 “Have they caught the guys who tried to kill my team yet?”  Tony asked.  
  
“No, but Daredevil said to tell you Elektra and She-Hulk are running down a lead in Washington,” Steve replied, pausing near the doorway.  
  
“That sounds promising…”  Tony nodded.  
  
“-Either way, the Avengers already voted to help out no matter what Colonel Fury says.  Whoever was behind Centralia was counting on the confusion of the crisis in New York to cover it, and now that-”  
  
“Wait, Fury did  _what_?”  Tony demanded, setting his coffee cup down and coming closer.  
  
“He pulled rank on us,” Steve said, disgustedly, “-and I had to go along with it, at least publicly.”  
  
“…Don’t you people have a charter from the city of New York?”  Tony pointed out.  
  
“Yes, but it assumes that the civil authorities will be working -with- us, and since SHIELD and the FBI have declared this a criminal   
investigation, we’ve been officially told to butt out,”  Steve explained.  
  
“Nobody told ME to stay out of it,” Tony said, angrily.  
  
“I was hoping you’d say that,”  Steve smiled,  “-and since someone clearly threatened the lives of seven citizens of New York with a force the police couldn’t have handled, the Avengers will be protecting them until SHIELD and the FBI have completed their investigation.”  
  
Tony grinned.  
  
“…Are you telling me you’re my bodyguard now?”    
  
“Yes,” Steve said, smugly.  
  
“-They’re going to nail your ass to the wall for this, you know that right?”  Tony warned him, suddenly serious.  
  
“It’s time to define what the Avengers  _are_ , Tony.  This isn’t about agency priority in a criminal investigation, this is about Fury being sore that I let the Centralia story break in the first place.  If I start letting SHEILD decide what truths I can tell, what battles are worth fighting… then I have no business leading the Avengers at all.”  
  
  
Tony caught his breath, and looked into Steve’s resolute face with newfound understanding.  He closed the distance between them in two steps, pinned Steve firmly against the kitchen counter, and kissed him.  Steve’s forgotten coffee splashed across his own fingers and Tony’s hip, and they broke apart abruptly.  
  
Tony swore.  Steve hissed softly through his teeth, and set the rest of his coffee -down-.  
  
“You okay?”  Tony asked.  
  
“Yeah…”  Steve nodded, wryly.  
  
“…Sorry about that.”  
  
“Nobody said being your bodyguard was going to be easy,” Steve smirked.  
  
“Peter,” Tony snapped his fingers, “-who did you put him with?”  
  
“The Scarlet Witch,” Steve replied.  
  
“Who else, what are the teams?”  Tony asked, looking for a dishtowel.  
  
“Well, Elektra’s out of reach in Washington DC with She-Hulk, and Jennifer’s one of our reserve members anyway.  Thor is with Luke and Danny, Quicksilver is teamed with Misty Knight, and I gave Hawkeye to Warbird.”  
  
“They’ll  _kill_  each other,” Tony breathed.  
  
“Exactly.  Warbird needs to learn some flexibility, and Hawkeye could stand to be taken down a peg or twelve,” Steve said, reasonably.  
  
Tony snorted, and wiped up the last of the spilled coffee.   
  
-  
  
Stane International weapons plant, NJ, 6:18 PM.  
  
  
Marvin Stavros, aide to Senator Byrd, stepped back off the edge of the platform with an air of resolution, and dropped.  He fell for two point one seconds, and was snagged by a flying web line.  Spider-Man looked down at the startled beaurocrat from the underside of the platform, and waved.  
  
“Hiya.  Nice speech, but we’ll need you to say alllll that again, in front of a grand jury.”    
  
Abruptly, the man’s head blew off.  
  
“Yikes!”  Spider man let the web line slip out of his fingers.  
  
“Regrettably, Mr. Stavros will be unavailable,” a deeply amused mechanical voice said, from on top of a mountain of shipping containers, “-and so will you.”  
  
Spider-Man leapt out of the way of the next shot as if by magic, and vanished behind a silo of granular sulfur.  
The exo-suit facing them was massive, at least twelve feet tall with shoulder-mounted rotary guns, and far bulkier than Tony’s Iron Man armor.  …It  _had_  to be, without an arc reactor to power it.  
  
“The Warmonger…”  Iron Man breathed, “-Stane actually built the damn thing  _knowing_  that it would kill-”  
  
“What’s the problem?”  Cap asked, quickly.  
  
“Atomic power,” Iron Man replied shortly, looking around and reading the symbols on the chemical silos around them, “-if we win, everybody here loses.”  
  
“He’d break right out of the Lead Zeppelin, wouldn’t he?”  Cap stated.  
  
“Oh, yeah.  That attack only worked on Radioactive Man because- -shit!”  Iron Man dodged a mortar round, just in time.  
  
“You’ve got to get him under water!”  Fury shouted, from over near the freight elevator.  
  
“Do I look like a freakin’  _submarine_?”  Iron Man shouted back.  
  
“Well you sure are yellow!”  Fury snarled.  
  
Scarlet Witch ignored her teammates, and hexed one of the Warmonger’s shoulder-guns into jamming.  
  
“Nice work,” Spider-Man said, approvingly.  He looked up at the way the silos towered into the twilit sky, and scampered up the back of one.    
Stealthily, he began spinning a canopy of web over the entire battlefield, thin-stranded but strong.    
  
“That thing’s bigger than you-” Cap began.  
  
“Yes, I GOT that part,” Iron Man agreed testily, squeezing together a steel ladder into a ball that he could throw like a child making a snowball.  
  
“Is he more  _magnetic_ than you?”  Cap asked.  
  
Iron Man paused, and hurled the ball towards the Warmonger armor with the full force of a hand-repulsor blast behind it.  While the momentary distraction lasted, he scanned his enemy.  
Iron Man’s eye-slits flickered pale orange.  
  
“Good call, Cap,” he said, selecting a transistor-boosted electromagnet from the compartment on his belt.  “-Spider!”  
  
“Yeah boss?”  Peter said, swinging over.  
  
“Web this to the back of his head or something,” Iron Man ordered, pressing the small device into his hand.  
  
“-On it!”  Spider-Man promised, and swung back up into the maze of silos and scaffolding.   
  
Warmonger fired a line of Phosphorus rounds after him, which Iron Man put a stop to by repulsor-blasting the other armor squarely in the face.  
  
Warmonger blew away half the empty silo Iron Man was using for cover, and it began to tip over.  Cap was thrown left towards where the Scarlet Witch was, but Iron Man and Fury were still on the same side of the platform, and had to dive for it to avoid the falling metal tower.  
  
“Fury, can you get a missile launch authorized?”  Iron Man demanded, picking himself up.  
  
“Is the pope Catholic?”  Fury shouted back.  “-What are ya plannin’ on doing, hitting him with it?”  
  
“Using it for magnetic flypaper and dumping him in the Atlantic.”  
  
“-You’re not askin’ for a nuke, are ya?”  Fury asked, dubiously.  
  
“God, no.  Plutonium would just catalyze the reaction when his suit reaches-” Iron Man began.  
  
“WATCH OUT!”  Fury yelled.  
  
Iron Man fired his boot-jets without asking why, and narrowly missed being pile-driven through the side of the downed silo.  Warmonger turned, took the two sides of the riven steel plating in his hands, and ripped them apart, striding back through.    
  
-  
  
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, 6:30 PM (same day).  
  
  
Tony woke up with his ears still ringing.  He could feel currents of air buffeting him from the right-hand side alone, and the heady, silent rush of super-powered flight as someone carried him.  
Opening his eyes, Tony found himself in the arms of a beautiful woman.  The surface of her blonde hair flickered in the rush of wind the way the edge of a frayed flag does, and the fact that she wasn’t squinting at this speed made her seem far more than human.  
  
“Well, that’s a welcome sight…”  Tony grinned behind his faceplate.  
  
“Welcome back, Iron Man,” Warbird smiled down at him.  
  
“How long was I out?”  Tony asked, perfectly happy with being carried Superman-style.  
  
“Long enough for Cap to call me  _twice_ , and Colonel Fury to pull his disappearing act when the Feds showed up.”  
  
“Hmm,” Tony responded, philosophically.  
  
“Fury also radioed in to tell to tell you ‘kiss the little mechanic for me’.  …Any idea what he meant by that?”  Warbird asked, archly.  
  
Tony laughed.  
  
“Fury suffers from the delusion that I’m going steady with the guy who repairs my armor,” Tony explained, casually.  
  
“Any truth to that?”  Warbird asked, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“We have more of what you’d call an open relationship,” Tony smirked.  “And… thanks for getting me off that missile, lady.  When I couldn’t break out of the magnetic field from Warmonger’s suit, I… that was a bad moment.”  
  
“What are friends for?”  Warbird smiled, looking up at the faint line of lights becoming clearer on the horizon.  
  
“Well… now that you mention it, can you call Cap?”  Tony asked.  “-I think the shockwave earlier knocked my helmet radio out, because all I can pick up is this god-awful talk show host…”  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 9:45 PM (same day).  
  
  
Peter swung comfortably in a hammock-like nest of webbing over the desk in the garage, one red and blue foot dangling tiredly over the side.  Like a loose strand of this lazily-spun web, a white phone cord looped down out of Peter’s nest to the phone jack on the wall below.  
  
“-Yeah, it’s me-” Peter was saying.  
Pause.  
“No, no, no, I’m all right-”  
Pause  
“-Yeah, thanks for covering for me.”  
Pause.  
 “-Well it’s… complicated.”  
Pause.  
“You saw  _what_  on the news?”  
Pause.  
“They finally caught the guy?  Huh, whaddya know?”  
Pause.  
“- _Tomorrow_ ,” Peter yawned, “-I’m just going to crash here tonight.”  
Pause.  
“No, you don’t have to do that, Tony said it was cool if I-.”  
Pause.  
“Yeah, I did.”  
Pause.  
“…Yeah he is, why?”  
Pause.  
“Look man, Tony’s my  _boss_ , I’m trying not to think too hard about them-” Peter began.  
Pause.  
“Who, Wanda?”  
Pause.  
“Oh yeah, she said to thank you for the flowers…”  
Pause.  
“…Yeah, I think she’s Romanian or something.”  
Pause.  
“No, like I told you, we’re just friends.  Her brother Pietro would atomize me,” Peter shuddered.  
Pause.  
“No, he’s-  
Pause.  
“ _Yes_ , I’m sure,” Peter smiled.  
Pause.  
“Goodnight, Harry.”  
  
-  
  
Tony’s bedroom, 9:46 PM (same day).  
  
  
“Is Peter still on the phone?”  Tony asked.  
  
Steve hung his scale mail shirt over a hook on the back of the closet door and paused, head slightly to one side, listening.  
  
“-Yes.”  
  
“Hmff,” Tony folded an arm over his eyes, “-screw it, I can’t be bothered…”  
  
“You’re just hungry,” Steve said, smiling at Tony sidelong and stepping out of his blue leather pants.  
  
“I told you, I’m not  _recharging_ , it’s re-synchronizing the electrical-” Tony broke off, and gave Steve a dirty look from beneath his arm, “-oh come  _on_ , you’re smart enough to understand this stuff.”  
  
Steve grinned and climbed into bed, touching a curve of the brass bed frame with his fingers as he did so.  ‘Hungry’ or not, Tony had a kiss waiting for him.  
  
“Plug this in for me, will ya?”  Tony said, pressing the electrical connector for the arc reactor into Steve’s hand without looking at it.  
  
Steve closed his fingers around the warm metal and plastic plug.  He’d seen it before, and it had always reminded him of a telephone switchboard plug from his own time, or the connector for a pilot’s radio headset, long and silver-bright.  
The temperature and weight of the metal was  _off_ , though… too heavy for stainless steel or silver, and it didn’t hold the heat of Tony’s hand the way it should have…    
Steve wondered what it was made of, and made a mental note to ask later.  
  
He reached down and ran his thumb across the arc’s left-hand socket, then plugged the connector in smoothly, without issuing any sort of warning or countdown.  
  
Tony shivered for a moment, then his whole body relaxed and he breathed easier.  
…For all the times Tony had caught Steve eyeing the arc reactor like it was kinky underwear of the  _very_ best kind, the blonde had still chosen to plug him in as if doing a serious medical procedure.  Interesting.  
  
“-Okay?”  Steve asked with a slight smile, hand on Tony’s arm.  
  
“ _Mmm_ ,” Tony nodded sleepily, “-did it jus’ fine.”  
  
Steve lay back, and gathered Tony’s head against his shoulder.  Tony scooted in a little closer, and felt the power cord pull straight against his chest.  
  
“…I need a longer cord,” Tony decided, frowning and moving back.  “…This’s a twelve.  Need to make a fifteen, maybe a twenty…”  
  
“Twenty,” Steve whispered into his hair.  
  
Tony looked up at him curiously.  
  
“Any special reason for that, Rogers?”  
  
“Well, it- -might come in handy,” Steve explained reasonably.  
  
“Hmm…”  One end of Tony’s mustache quirked upwards, “-yeah, I could make one of those.”  
  
Steve moved closer so the current cord would reach, and Tony re-settled himself with a quiet sigh.  Steve pressed a kiss to his temple, then lay back against Tony’s pillow and shut his eyes.  
  
Tony drifted somewhere between sleep and waking, riding the steady hum of the power from the wall.    
His mind wandered, and he saw other cities.  He saw a canyon with sheer walls.  A silver twin-engine fighter plane chasing clouds like a high-speed flechette round.  Tall, silent monoliths of neon, wavering in the rain.  A glowing subway map, and a hundred, a thousand fluxuations of weight and momentum sparking back along the tracks…  
  
Tony came fully awake suddenly, eyes open.    
He let out a breath, and reached up to unplug the power cord from his chest.  It didn’t feel any different out than it had in, which meant the synch had finished long ago.  Tony let the cord slip out of his fingers to the floor, and raised his head a little.  
Steve was out cold beside him, lips slightly parted, the arm that wasn’t around Tony curled up above his head.  
…Damn.  
Tony could hardly blame him though, and with Peter sleeping over downstairs, maybe it was just as well…  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:55 PM.  
  
  
Peter clipped the last of his drying photographs to the web-line he’d strung back and forth across the bathroom ceiling, and switched out the red light bulb for a regular one to examine them.  
  
An oak tree in the park, with a bird just taking off from one of its branches.  
  
A dog of uncertain breed, wearing a frayed camouflage bandanna, and sticking it’s wet black nose right up towards the camera.  
  
The soaped window of a building that had been broken into, from the inside.  
  
An elderly Chinese lady on a bus, her hair rolled up in a severe hairdo secured by a pair of long wooden chopsticks.  
  
Harry Osborne in a rumpled button-down shirt, buried in physics class homework, looking up with an expression of humor and long-suffering patience.  
  
A beautiful dark-blue car in the sun.  
  
Several of Mary Jane Watson dressed as Shakespeare’s Juliet, and one candid shot of her sitting on the grass in front of the school with a sandwich poised in one hand, studying a small book that lay open in her lap.  
  
A shot of Tony that was mostly shadows, dominated by the cold blue-orange flame of the welding torch in his hand.  
  
Tony asleep on the couch in far better light, worn black boots crossed over one armrest, face hidden beneath a folded newspaper.  
  
Iron Man breaking mach one, from unwisely close range- -he’d blurred that one.  
  
A full-length shot of Captain America, standing with one foot on the corner of a red-brick building and looking capable.  
  
Steve’s unmasked face, focusing as he painted something detailed onto the tank of a silver-gray motorcycle.  
  
Aunt May’s flower bed, before the nights had turned to frost.  
  
Luke Cage lifting up a broken slab of re-barred concrete, while one firefighter reached into the space underneath for a trapped child, and another in the foreground gave orders to someone out of the frame.   
  
A shot of himself as Spider-Man, swinging off one of the steel supports that now formed a hard, complex latticework between the buildings of Wall Street.  Two police cars and a dump-truck hauling rubble drove on the cleared street below him, and an American flag had been hung from one of the beams that ran across horizontally.  …Someone had even found the time to spray paint _‘I heart NY’_  on a girder planted in the sidewalk to the dump-truck’s left.  
  
A huge mob of dead lava-men in an intersection near the theater district, still coated and anonomized by the glistening coat of unnatural ice that had frozen them in mid-charge.  
  
A full-length shot of Nick Fury, in the act of ordering him to put away the camera.  
  
Dr. Strange from a slight down-angle, caught with one hand gripping the edge of his high-collared cloak, his serious expression and the frost caught in his dark hair making him seem far older.  
  
Wanda Maximoff… just her profile and the edge of a fire escape railing in the background, as the late afternoon sun painted her in all the colors of warmth.  
  
Two looters, encased in web along with the color TV they were in the act of stealing, suspended from a lamppost.   
  
War Machine in flight, lifting a city bus.  
  
A young NYPD cop, glaring uneasily at Hawkeye’s back as if unsure whether to pull him out of the assembled group of costumed heroes and arrest him or not.  
  
Daredevil and Misty Knight looking exhausted, sitting on the wide, flat steps of a high-rise apartment building.  
  
Warbird handing the Scarlet Witch a Styrofoam cup that steamed promisingly in what had been the early-morning chill, and Wanda looking up at her with a smile.   
  
The Avengers in full sunlight on the steps of their headquarters a week later, with Steve and Thor standing in the middle.  
  
Tony leaning one arm against the jukebox, and watching with interest as Steve picked out a song.  It had been something by Johnny Cash that time, Peter remembered-  
  
Peter’s Spider-sense tingled, _just_ preceding a loud but familiar knock.  
  
“Hey Peter!  Are you done in there?”  Tony called through the bathroom door.  
  
“Y- yeah almost, but can leave I these up to dry until-” Peter began.  
  
“ _Whatever_ , suit up!”  Tony cut him off.  “-We’ve got creeps in a hijacked coast guard cutter attacking a container ship near Ellis Island…”  
  
“Where’s Steve?  Is he meeting us there?”  
  
“He’s already up on the roof,” Tony yelled back, over the first crashing chords of  _‘Immigrant song’_ , “-less talking, more long johns…”  
  
Peter rolled his eyes, and pulled on his mask.

-


	3. Chapter 3

-

Tony’s bedroom above the Iron Horse Garage, 11:18 PM, 1972.  
  
  
“Steve–”  
  
He was a direction, a scent, a heartbeat.    
 _“S-steve…  hmmn…”_  
  
He was warmth, and strength, and wave after crashing wave.  
“AH!  THERE-FUCK-FUCKFUCKFUCK-YES-GOD-DAMN-YESS-”  
  
He was a blanket, and a pair of living handcuffs.  
“Ah- …S-  St- Ahh…”  
  
He was hard, and hot, and fucking.  Perfect.  
 _“STEVENNNNNN!!!”_  
  
He talked too much, and he was too careful, and he thought cutting off a litany of swearwords with a kiss wasn’t obvious.  
“..M….mh…!”  
  
He was deliciously heavy.  
 _“-Ohhhhh…”_  
  
He was a nexus of probability, a focal point… …a star.  
“Steve do you- -do you know what this- -just, please, I–”  
  
He was accurate, and sneaky, and generous.  
“GahhhhOH MY GOD-hehehehehe!”  
  
He was slick motion, and liquid, living metal.  
“————–Ste—————–ven—————–!!”  
  
He seemed to take up more oxygen than most people did.  
“-Oh…!”  
  
He was- w-  
  
Tony screamed, and shuddered against the mattress, and pressed his forehead against the creased, damp sheets.  He felt his fingers slip and twist between Steve’s, still held fast.  He saw a white base-four linear fractal before his closed eyes, with a yellow center.  
He came and it wasn’t over, and the world narrowed to a flash of purple, then fading shots of blue.  Black bursts of heat where light wasn’t, and hard sparks that left him breathless.  
And then it -was- over, and Steve’s forehead and nose were resting against the curve of back of his neck, and the air in the room felt suddenly cooler.  
Tony shivered a little.  
  
Steve nuzzled the side of his neck drowsily, and let go of Tony’s sweat-slick hands to hug his shoulders securely, still buried deep inside.  
Tony stopped shivering.  Focused enough to complete the action of swallowing.  Breathed.  
Steve was there.  Not so heavy now.  Breathing too.  Asking something, soft, and calm, and imperative.  
Captain.  
  
“…Come back to me, Captain,” Steve was saying.  
  
Oh.  Okay-  
Tony’s eyes opened on the second try.  Tracked.  Focused on the back of Steve’s hand against the pale sheets.  Both sheets and hand were faintly illuminated by a shifting pale-blue glow, as if from within.  
Wait.  Tony remembered now.  The glow was coming from him.  From the arc reactor in his chest.  And he could see it, so they were sideways now.  That- -that was good…  
Steve dropped a kiss against the top of his shoulder, and waited.  
Tony grinned, shut his eyes, and sighed unsteadily.  
  
“…Hi, Steve,” he whispered, finally.  
  
“Hey,” Steve murmured, and kissed his shoulder again.  He paused a moment or two, then added, “I need to-“  
  
“Mm,” Tony nodded slightly, “-go ahead.”    
Steve disengaged as carefully as he could, but Tony’s breath still caught at the movement.  
  
“Okay?”  Steve asked, hand on his shoulder.  
  
“Mm,” Tony nodded again, wryly.  
  
Steve threw the condom away in the trash by the bed, and was glad to be rid of it.  He was slightly -between- sizes for those things, but Tony insisted they were important even between men, so he dealt with them.  
Tony had used a stray pair of boxer shorts for his own cleanup, and dropped them elsewhere.    
  
Steve rejoined Tony in the center of the bed, and Tony pulled the sheets up over both of them.  They lay face to face beneath, and looked at each other by slowly rippling blue-white light.    
Steve reached over, and touched Tony’s face.    
Tony smiled sleepily.  
  
“…Why do you like it like that?”  Steve whispered, after a while.  
  
“You should let me show you sometime,” Tony offered, with a smirk.  
  
“Ah… no,” Steve decided uncomfortably, “-can’t you… describe it somehow?”  
  
Tony shut his eyes and sighed, considering.  
  
“It’s like being drop-forged.  So hot… and also so cold…”  Tony stopped talking, and frowned.  “No Steve, I really can’t.”  
  
“I guess I’ll just have to take your word for it, then.”  
  
“-Until you work up the balls to try it, yeah,” Tony teased.  
  
“What if I never do?”  Steve asked, seriously.  
  
Tony was silent for a long time, and Steve started to wonder if an apology might be in order.  
  
“…You don’t know I’m kidding, do you?”  Tony said, finally.  His eyes were soft, almost sad.  He reached out, and drew Steve’s head in against his chest, turning onto his back as he did so.  He stroked Steve’s almost-dry hair.  “I wouldn’t ask that.  Either it’s in you, or it isn’t.  Me, I’m always changing… adaptable.  I’ve heard that Turing and DaVinci were the same way, so maybe it comes with the territory.  -And I can’t think of one man on this planet that there’s less shame in bottoming for.”  
  
Steve blushed, not altogether pleased.  
  
“What if I did want to try it?”  He asked, a little gruffly.  
  
“-Then I would be honored,” Tony promised, after a pause.  
  
Steve relaxed, and Tony could feel part of the blonde’s smile against his chest.  
They slept.  
  
-  
  
Tony’s bedroom, 6:35 AM  
  
Steve awakened to the sound of metal pans being moved.    
He smiled, and stretched across the rumpled bed in every direction, hands fisting.  
Steve got up, found a pair of pajama pants with a pencil-thin pattern of light blue and white stripes, and disappeared into the bathroom.  
  
From the time he was twelve to the time he was fifteen, Steve and his mother Sarah had lived in a small apartment that had a kitchen sink, but no private bathroom.  -That had been down the hall.  He’d made a point of brushing his teeth in the kitchen sink that they didn’t share with anyone though, and in a way Steve had been judging every living space he’d had since on the basis of whether or not he’d had to brush his teeth and/or shave in the kitchen sink.  
  
In college, he had.  In the army, he’d often used his -helmet- for those things.  Avengers Tower was a bit of a puzzle, because though his room was far nicer than many of the hotels the Army had billeted him in while on stateside missions, it didn’t have a sink at -all-.  There were two bathrooms on his floor, a gents and a ladies, both (he was assuming in the case of the ladies) perfectly nice in an upscale private gym sort of way, and cleaned daily by Ms. Van Dyne’s staff.  
…But there were days when Steve found himself eyeing the battered Army foot locker where he kept his helmet, and wondering if it would still hold water.    
He was sharing the bathroom here with Tony of course, but there was something about the way the mechanic couldn’t seem to get through a single teeth-brushing session without trying to talk around the toothpaste suds that made that strangely worthwhile…  
  
  
“Mmm.  You taste like toothpaste.”  
  
“You taste like… chocolate cake?”  Steve finished, surprised.  
  
“Yeah, there was a piece left over from the other night,” Tony nodded, turning back to what he was doing, “-I broke it up into the pancake batter.”  
  
“Is that good?”  Steve asked, smiling.  
  
“No idea, but I’m about to try ‘em out on Peter…”  Tony poured the first wide dollop of brown-flecked pancake batter into a skillet, and swept the edge of the mixing spoon along the side of the bowl so it wouldn’t drip.  
  
“Want me to make anything?”  
  
“No, I’ve got this,” Tony replied, absently.  
  
Steve poured himself a glass of orange juice, and watched Tony from the table for a while.  It felt like something he should remember.  
Steve finished half his orange juice, then got up and set the table.  
Tony set the third pancake aside and poured a fourth, using the same set of neat, automatic gestures he’d used for the previous ones.  
  
“-Why breakfast?”  Steve asked, leaning his hip slightly against the kitchen counter to Tony’s left, and folding his arms.  
  
“It’s the most important meal of the day…”  Tony quoted with a smile, inspecting the way the edges of the batter stopped bubbling first.  
  
Steve waited.  
  
“…And ah- my cellmate used to bring me breakfast while I was recovering from this,” Tony added, tapping his chest just beside the arc reactor.  
  
“He sounds like a good man,” Steve said.  
  
“Yeah, he was,” Tony nodded fondly, “-Professor Yinsen.  I’d actually read some of his papers, from before the war-” he began, flipping the pancake with a spatula.  
  
The door yanked open abruptly, and Peter bounded into the room, complete with long-suffering blue backpack and mask-wrecked hair.  
  
“Hi.  Hi Steve.  You would not believe how late I am- …hey what’s wrong with the pancakes-?”  Peter asked, with concern.  
  
“Good morning, Peter,” said Steve.  
  
“-Catch,” Tony ordered, and flipped the third pancake he’d made off the top of the cooling stack with a flick of his spatula.    
  
Peter caught it, passed it from hand to hand for a moment, and dove into one of the kitchen cabinets for a jar of peanut butter.  He slathered one entire side of the large pancake in the crunchy brown paste, rolled it up like a tortilla, and ate half in two bites.  
  
“Mrph-mm?”  Peter asked, pointing to Steve’s orange juice.  
  
“Go ahead,” Steve smirked.  
  
Peter finished the pancake, and Steve’s orange juice.  
  
“You’re going to be back after class to do January, right?”  Tony asked, handing Peter a second pancake roll-up.  
  
“…Uh… yeah!  Gotta go, thanks, bye!”  Peter said, taking the roll-up from him and vanishing back down the stairs.  
  
Tony rescued the fourth pancake just as the non-chocolate parts of the batter were starting to shade down past mahogany, and set it aside.  
  
“…Are you ever actually going to  _pay_ him?”  Steve asked with amusement, closing the door.  
  
“I -do- pay him, it’s just not much,” Tony shrugged, pouring in the last of the batter.  
  
Steve thought of the way he’d let Bucky bum cokes off of him when he’d wanted to make sure the boy wouldn’t disappear.  
  
“…What were you saying just now about professor Yinsen?”  Steve asked, leaning back against the kitchen counter.  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage 4:40 PM.  
  
 _  
‘-But you and I, we’ve been through that  
And this is not our fate  
So let us not talk falsely now  
The hour is getting late, hey-’_  
  
Tony reached down for a quarter-inch wrench, fingers passing knowingly over the tools laid out on the towel beside him, and locating it by feel.  He inched his body a little further beneath the Mustang, pulling the towel along with him by one smudged corner.  
  
 _‘-Hey-  
All along the watchtower  
Princes kept the view  
While all the women came and wen-’_  
  
Click.  Click-click.  
  
 _‘One, Two, Three O'clock, Four O'clock rock,  
Five, Six, Seven O'clock, Eight O'clock rock-!’_  
  
Tony blinked, then frowned darkly.  His wrench paused in mid-turn.  
  
 _‘-Nine, Ten, Eleven O'clock, Twelve O'clock rock,  
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight-!’_  
  
Sliding out from under the car by the chassis, Tony stood up and glared at the back of the slim, wavy-haired kid leaning happily over the jukebox.  
  
“Hey!”  Tony called, striding over with barely-controlled annoyance, “-can I help you with something?”  
  
The kid looked up, startled, then smiled.  He was good looking in a delicate ‘James Dean’ sort of way, and he stood almost as tall as Tony once he’d straightened up.  
  
“You’re Tony, right?  Peter’s boss?”  
  
“’Fraid so-” Tony began.  
  
“Harry Osborne,” the kid offered gamely, shaking Tony by the hand, “-Peter’s told me so much about you…”  
 _  
Balls_ , Tony judged.  Maybe not long on brains, but the kid thought on his feet.  
  
“-That would make you the artist,” Tony said as he returned Harry’s handshake.  
  
“He told you that I- -oh man…  I’m  _taking_ art, but I think I’ve caught one or two of my still-life compositions trying to crawl away,” Harry laughed.  
  
 “You should try painting metal sometime,” Tony suggested, nodding towards the beautiful red Mustang over his shoulder.  
  
“Is that a sixty-five?”  Harry asked.  
  
“Yes, it is.  Do you know cars?”  Tony asked, politely.  
  
 “My- -I know somebody who has one of these,” Harry said, looking the car over with a fair show of interest. “-Is Peter around?”  He added, casually.   
  
“Nah, he went out somewhere earlier with my roommate,” Tony shrugged.  
  
“Where?”  
  
“Jogging, I  _think_.  Steve’s kind of a health nut, and he’s determined to drag the rest of us down with him.”  
  
“Oh yeah, Peter said he used to coach gymnastics,” Harry nodded.  
  
“He did?  Well, that explains a lot,” Tony said, careful to keep his smirk within bounds.  “-Listen, I don’t know when they’ll be back, and I’ve gotta get back to work here…”  Tony gestured towards the Mustang.  
  
“Oh,” Harry sounded a little crestfallen.  
  
“-I’ll tell Peter you stopped by, all right?”  
  
“Okay, thanks.  Nice to finally meet you, Tony.”  
  
“Actually… hit ‘D-9’ for me first, will ya?”  Tony decided, pointing to the jukebox.  
  
“Sure,” Harry entered the combination.  
  
 _‘She packed my bags last night pre-flight  
Zero hour nine a.m.  
And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then  
I miss the earth so much I miss my wife  
It’s lonely out in space  
On such a timeless flight-’_  
  
“…I’ve never heard this song before,” Harry realized, surprised.  
  
“You will,” Tony promised with a slight smile, “-see you around, Harry.”  
  
 _‘-And I think it’s gonna be a long long time  
Till touch down brings me round again to find-  
I’m not the man they think I am at home  
Oh no no no-’_  
  
-  
  
Tony’s bedroom, 8:48 PM.  
  
  
“-See, I- -told you I could- -do it…”  Tony panted, grinning.  
  
“You forgot Germanium, and Vibranium is  _before_ Tungsten,” Steve corrected, smiling up at him smugly.  
  
“I did NOT-” Tony protested, eyes widening.  
  
“You did.  They’re right there in the book,” Steve said, pressing a kiss low against the plane of Tony’s stomach.    
  
Tony let his head fall back against the pillows and let out a breath, staring up at the ceiling.  
“Well, you’re… getting better…” he admitted, reasonably.  
  
Their eyes met over the arc, neither one could keep from laughing.  
  
-  
  
Midtown Public High School, 1:12 PM.  
  
  
The campus was alive with green leaves, and the June sky overhead held the promise of perfect flying weather.  
Tony assumed Murphy’s Law would kick in at any moment, but he was enjoying it while it lasted, safe behind the lenses of his dark sunglasses.  
Harry graduated first, then Peter five students afterwards.  Tony had never noticed how close their last names were alphabetically, but friendships had begun on less.  
At his side, Peter’s aunt May blinked rapidly, and the arm she held linked through Tony’s trembled, just a little.  Tony wasn’t sure what to do about it, so he gave her a reassuring smile that May completely missed, since her eyes were still focused up on the stage.    
  
They all looked unspeakably young, Tony thought.  He -saw- kids of this age, saw them daily in and around the village, and dotting the sidewalks and public parks when he was out flying… but it was different seeing them all  _en masse_  and up close.  So much concentrated, brittle, teenage emotion.  So much potential for disaster, greatness, and mediocrity.  A soft, strange, merciless microcosm was ending up there on that stage, every bit as cold, beautiful, and brilliant as the real world, only with plastic-smooth skin, and weird haircuts.  
Starting tomorrow, none of these graduates would ever be a part of it again.  
  
Tony had never gone to a public school, but he’d always sort of wondered about them.   
His own graduating class had looked different.  For one thing their caps and gowns had been plain black and their faces mostly white, but for another his prep school class had all been boys.  The sons of America, the best of the best, heading out to conquer the world or get rich trying.  They’d been officers, and CEO’s, and politicians.  Lawyers, ground-breaking scientists, and astronauts…  
They’d all been gods, on the day they graduated.  
  
Some of those young gods were dead now, sinking slowly into the rich soil of foreign jungles, or making their mark on the world in bloodstained office carpeting.  
Some of them -were- now in the positions of power they had set out to claim.  
Tony stood somewhere in between, wearing a beautifully tailored suit that now fit him a little snugly across the shoulders, and watched Peter rejoin his classmates, diploma in hand, and indelible boyish grin firmly on his face.  
  
  
Tony hung back as aunt May congratulated Peter, and surreptitiously checked his watch.  All the indicator lights were still off.  
May came back with Peter in tow, and Tony faced the boy squarely.  Both of them seemed to draw themselves up a little.    
Tony took off his sunglasses in a deliberate gesture, slipped them into his shirt pocket, and saluted crisply.  
Peter caught his breath, and saluted back.    
Tony reached over left-handed, unfolded Peter’s little finger into a full salute with an affectionately muttered,   
  
“-Boy Scout…” and held his own salute a moment longer before dropping it.    
  
Peter put his hand down too, eyes shining.  
  
“You’ve earned this,” Tony said with a tight smile, tapping the end of Peter’s diploma.  
  
“Yeah, I really did,” Peter agreed, grinning.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, Tony spotted Norman Osborne.  He hadn’t seen the new technical director of SHIELD in years, not since a party out in the Hamptons about three months before he’d lost control of Stark Industries.  Why was- -Norman stopped to have a few words with Peter’s friend Harry, and everything clicked.  Harry  _Osborne_ , why hadn’t he seen the resemblance before?  They both had the same tall, thin build, the same large eyes and tightly-cut wavy hair that seemed to be two different shades at once when the sunlight hit it…  
…What the hell had Norman Osborne’s kid been doing in a  _public school?_     
Tony dismissed the question as something to ferret out of Peter later.  
Norman dismissed Harry with a final qualified nod of approval, and approached Peter’s group eagerly.  
His eyes flicked a quick, surprised glance in Tony’s direction, and Norman’s amiable, shark-like smile broadened a little.  
  
  
“I’ve never seen my father offer somebody a job in his R&D department so fast in my life,” Harry said, with an uncomfortable smile.  
  
“Well, if wishes were horses,” Tony shrugged, hands in his pockets.  
  
“…You’re seriously not going to take it,” Harry realized, looking at him a little puzzled.  
  
“Nope, I had enough of working for the government in Vietnam,” Tony assured him, “-and that includes SHIELD.”  
  
“Oh,” Harry nodded once, relaxing.  
  
Norman was -still- talking confidentially to a rather uncomfortable Peter, one arm around the boy’s shoulders as if Harry and Tony  _hadn’t_ been standing ten feet behind him.    
Harry sighed quietly, and a flicker of naked pain showed for a moment in his eyes.  
  
…Then he spotted a pretty red-headed girl arguing with a black-haired jock on the outskirts of the milling graduation-day crowd, and perked up considerably as the jock stalked off in a rejected huff.  Harry drifted away towards the girl without a backwards glance, as if pulled by the force of gravity.  
  
Tony smiled, and slipped his sunglasses back on.  
  
-  
  
Tony’s kitchen, 3:55 PM.  
  
  
The phone rang.  Tony pounced on it.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“Tony?”  Warbird asked.  
  
“-Yes, speaking.”  
  
“Have you heard from Steve yet?”  
  
Tony shut his eyes.  
  
“…No,” he sighed, “-you haven’t either, I take it.”  
  
“No, and he’s still not answering his- -phone,” Warbird caught herself.  
  
“Right.  Ah… I’m sending our mutual friend over,” Tony decided.  
  
“Understood, sir.”  
  
-  
  
Tony’s bedroom, 8:20 PM (next day)  
  
  
“…Steve?”  Tony stopped in the open doorway.  
  
There was large shape curled up on the foot of the bed, cocooned in the blankets.  
  
“Steve…?”  Tony repeated, more cautiously.  
  
“Um… yes?”  Steve replied hesitantly, from the blanket-roll.  
  
“Jesus, you scared the shit out of me…”  Tony swore, letting out a breath, “-are you okay?”  
  
“I’m… I’m not injured,” Steve replied, tiredly.  
  
“You’re not okay, either,” Tony stated.  He put his keys down on the dresser, and came over.  Steve’s shield lay roughly in the middle of the bed, star upwards.  
  
Tony knelt by the foot of the bed, and put his arms around where he judged Steve’s head and shoulders to be.  Steve’s scale-mail armor clinked a little under his hands.  
Tony put his face down against Steve’s neck, inhaled deeply, and nuzzled him through the blanket-roll.    
  
“Hey.  Don’t do this again, babe,” Tony murmured, “…Come back to me, Captain.”  
  
Steve made a choked, unhappy noise.  His shoulders shook a little.  
Tony rubbed Steve’s side through both blanket and mail-shirt, slow and comforting.  
He listened carefully to the cadence of Steve’s breathing coming down, relaxing.  
  
“…Better?” he whispered, after a while.  
  
“I’m… just glad to be home,” Steve swallowed.  
  
“What happened?”  Tony asked, in the same calm, low voice.   
  
“…I don’t want talk about it,” Steve said, quietly.  “-The others, are- -are they safe?”  
  
“Last I checked, your Avengers were fine,” Tony reassured him, “-they’re out looking for you, actually.”  
  
“-And Peter?”  Steve asked, still sounding worried.  
  
“I sent the kid home early yesterday.  I figured anything serious enough to keep you from answering…”  Tony trailed off grimly.  
  
“…Yeah.  Good thinking,” Steve nodded.  
  
“You didn’t get doused in Adhesive X, did you?”  Tony asked, looking down at the blanket-roll suddenly.  
  
“No…”  Steve said, with a shadow of his usual humor.  
  
“Good,” Tony smiled, “-because from what I hear, that stuff is a _bitch_  to get off…”  
  
“So I hear,” Steve agreed.  
  
“Hey,” Tony murmured, somewhere in the vicinity of Steve’s ear.  
  
“Hm-?”  
  
“-I’m glad you’re back, hero.”  
  
“There’s no-where else I’d rather be,” Steve promised, quiet but clear.   
  
“Are you ready to come out of that blanket now?”  Tony asked, rubbing Steve’s shoulder a little.  
  
“…Not really,” Steve admitted, uneasily.  
  
“Can I come in with you then?”  Tony asked, goosing him in the ribs.  
  
“No!”  Steve replied, beginning to sound exasperated.  
  
“Come on, babe.  …I just want to see for myself that you’re really okay,” Tony explained, “…you’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”  
  
“Well-”  
  
“Come on.  One kiss, and then I’ll leave you alone to do your caterpillar- cocoon- whatever,” Tony promised, illustrating the shape of the blankets by twirling one hand vaguely in the air.  
  
“The things I do for my country…”  Steve sighed, through what finally sounded like a smile.  
  
Tony let Steve do the unwrapping until he was almost visible, and then tried to push Steve’s hood back.  Steve batted his hands away with an impatient noise, and glared out of the loosened blankets at him with a mixture of reproach and amusement.  
Tony looked deep into his sky blue eyes with relief, and kissed him warmly.  
  
…And slapped the handcuffs that he’d picked up from the top of the dresser onto the mystery guy’s exposed wrists  _very_ quickly, because the  _real_  Steve would have been able to discern the clink of forged-steel cuffs beneath the rattle of his descending keys.  
  
  
Tony’s prisoner broke the kiss when he felt the first touch of steel against his skin, but it was already too late.  Tony leapt back away from the bed, and yanked the man half off the mattress onto his face by the handcuff chain.  
  
“My, what bad breath you have…”  Tony quipped, wrinkling his nose.  
  
“I will KILL you for this!”  The man shouted, twisting in Tony’s grasp like a mad tiger and trying to kick his legs free of the blankets that wound around them.  
  
Tony was no super-soldier, but he turned wrenches for a living, and the grip of his calloused fingers around the thin, strong chain held firm.    
Tony punched the man in the face with a hard, jabbing left.  
To his credit the man didn’t go down, though the edge of Steve’s leather mask with the force of Tony’s fist behind it opened a slight, tearing cut along the lower edge of the mystery man’s eye socket.  Far from dazing him, this blow seemed to send the doppelganger  _mad_.  He fought like a man possessed, and Tony caught a heavy red boot to the side of the head in the melee.  He stumbled momentarily, his grip loosening-  
  
“HAH!   _Now_ , you fall-!”  His enemy was on him in less than a second, chained wrists looped around Tony’s throat from behind, strangling the life out of him with a strength born of sheer, uncomplicated bloodlust.  
  
They grappled in near-silence, a battle of wills, sinew, and oxygen.  Tony’s desperate choking, gurgling sounds as his fingers tried to claw under the chain that barred his throat, and the fetid yet recognizably human growl heating the back of his right ear in harsh, determined pants as the chain was pulled tighter…  
  
  
Peter’s webline whipped past their heads, snagged the bedside table lamp from the other side of the room, and brought it crashing back against the side of Tony’s opponent’s skull.  
The man spun with the impact of the blow, pulling Tony to the floor with him.  
Tony’s part in the fall was disturbingly boneless.  
  
Peter’s eyes narrowed and he laid into whatever  _thing_  was wearing Steve’s face with a vicious rain of punishing fists.  
…Which worked fine, until his enemy dived sideways with both red-gloved hands outstretched, and grabbed something in the tangle of blankets trailing off the side of the bed.  
It glowed suddenly brighter between his fingers, and Peter was flung across the room into the closet door by a bolt of crackling yellow energy.  The handcuffs simply ceased to exist, and the man surged to his feet, the glowing object held high and threateningly in his upraised hand.  
  
“FOOL!  Did you  _really_ think you could stand before the master of the  _COSMIC CUBE_?!”  The impostor mocked him, gesturing towards the mask that hung folded over his belt…  
  
Peter had missed it before, since Steve hung his red gloves over his belt in almost exactly the same position… and the mask, too, was red.  
A red… grinning… skull.  
  
“Check, please…”  Peter said in a small voice, sticking to the half-broken closet door as he had impacted against it, diagonally and upside down.  
  
  
Laughing triumphantly, the Red Skull wished his Captain America disguise away and his own rightful mask back in place by the power of the cube.  
In the split-second that it took the villain to do so, Peter saw an opening.  He  _went_  for it, webbing the Red Skull’s right elbow and yanking it forwards, while throwing out another line for the cube itself.  
  
“NO!  The power must be  _MIIIIINE!_ ”  
  
The Red Skull’s fingers closed reflexively around his prize, but Peter yanked the line back with his full spider-enhanced strength, and the cube lashed backwards before the Skull could remember to wish instead of grab, embedding itself in the drywall near the top of the closet door.  
  
Both of them stared at it for a split second.  It was kind of a strange sight, after all…  
  
Then they both went for it, but Peter got there first.  He set his back  _against_  the cube instead of wasting time digging it out, and blasted the Red Skull full in the face with webbing.  
  
“I will have your EYES for this, you interfering  _freak_!”  The Red Skull shrieked, closing the fingers of one clutching hand around Peter’s ankle from memory and drawing the other back in a fist to shatter Peter’s knee.  
 _  
Oh jeez don’t let him touch me-!_  Peter thought, in the tiniest fraction of a second before his body finished tensing to move.  
  
A light flashed blindingly behind Peter’s left shoulder blade, and the Red Skull’s fingers slid harmlessly  _through_  Peter’s ankle by the force of their own brutal gripping strength.    
  
“What?  What’s this-!”  The Red Skull tore the webbing from his face, and attempted to regain his grip on Peter’s ankle again, this time denting in a section of the wall behind it.  
  
“-Time to go,”  Peter decided, executing a leap over the Red Skull’s head (he couldn’t stomach the idea of diving _through_ him, even if it were possible…) and yanking the cube out of the wall after him by the still-attached webline.  
The web, weakened by its passage through the drywall and the slipperiness of the cube itself,  _let go_.  
  
The Cosmic Cube fell from the wall, and Peter’s next hastily thrown web hit the back of the Red Skull’s hand in just enough time to yank IT away, instead of snagging the cube itself.  
  
“Finders-”  Peter webbed the Skull’s back, and jerked him away from the glowing cube on the floor by the closet-  “-keepers!”  
  
“CEASE this, you infernal  _insect!_   You are only  _lengthening_  your hours of pain before I choose to  _LET_  you die…!”  
  
The Skull made one last desperate bid to reach the cube, but Peter was reeling him in, binding more and more of his limbs back with weblines.  The Red Skull turned on him with a wild light of anger in his eyes and charged, yelling murderously.  Peter was pretty sure he couldn’t be grabbed again, but he dodged anyway, using the move to loop all the weblines connected to the Skull around one of the brass bedposts.    
He’d mis-judged the Skull’s target, though.  
  
The Red Skull used the slack his sudden charge had given him to reach Steve’s shield on the bed, and throw it.  …Something in Peter’s mind  _recoiled_ at that sight.  Even the Skull’s -stance- had been correct, unsurprising in a canny villain who must have seen Captain America do it dozens of times.  Peter dodged the Red Skull’s attack at the last moment, and the shield sliced into a framed Jackson Pollack print on the wall behind him with a sudden crash of shattering glass.  
Then everything in the room -stopped-.  
  
  
The Red Skull was frozen, face contorted in rage, arm still outstretched from his throw.  
Peter was immobilized too, staring up at a star-field of suspended broken glass that burst outwards from where the shield had embedded itself through frame, picture, and wall.  
Tony rose to his knees with the cube in hand, and the only sound in the room was the rasp of his unhealthy-sounding breathing.  There was a dark, ugly bruise in the shape of the handcuff-chain across his throat, and a trickle of blood painting a thin line of red down the side of his neck from somewhere near his left ear.  
He took in the room with a quick, cold glance, and then looked at the cube in his hand thoughtfully.  
  
Tony’s eyes flicked to the Red Skull, who was instantly encased in something like a giant iron coffin.  
The weight of it did in the floor entirely, and the round-edged metal box fell through into the back of the garage with a splintering crash.  
Tony looked exasperated for a moment, and the hole in the floor disappeared as if it had never been.  
Peter found he could move again, and had to execute a quick back-flip to keep from falling over.  He bounced off the tips of his fingers, and landed lightly in front of Tony in a crouch.  
  
“Boss, are you okay?  I came as soon as your locator beacon went off, can you breathe?  You sound like that creepy guy from the water department who used to call Aunt May at two in the m-”  
  
Tony clapped his free hand over Peter’s mouth through the Spider-Man mask, and gave him a weak, lopsided smile.  Then he concentrated for a moment, and his breathing eased.  Peter’s shoulders relaxed visibly.  Tony patted the side of Peter’s masked face, then braced a hand on his costumed shoulder, and stood.  
  
-  
  
Avengers Tower, 2:28 PM (two days later).  
  
  
“And then the Cosmic Cube just … _disappeared_ _?_ ”  Fury reviewed, gesturing skeptically across the Avengers conference table with the end of his cigar.  
  
“Pretty much,” the Falcon nodded, arms folded.   
  
“It-” (cough) “-melted, actually,” Tony clarified, his voice still barely above a whisper.  
  
“More like a gelatinous ooze-” began Spider-Man, “-I think I still had some of the goop dried on my glove before that scarf guy threw me in the river…”  
  
“At any rate sir, the Cube was destroyed,” Cap summarized, “-so we accepted the newly-liberated islanders’ gracious offer of a ride to mainland Jamaica in one of their sailing craft, and I was able to contact the Avengers from Kingston.”  
  
“- _After_ you got magicked down there by the Red Skull in the first place, and decided to pass tha time by trainin’ this birdman kid- -what the hell was your name again…?”  
  
“The Falcon.  … _Suh_ ,” Falcon replied, just this side of insolence.  
  
The bird of prey perched on his muscular shoulder fixed it’s small, sharp eyes on the man it’s human partner didn’t like, and hunched its wings out at the stranger pointedly.    
  
“C’mon, Redwing…”  Falcon murmured, reaching up with two fingers to stroke the bird’s soft, tensely fluffed throat feathers.  Redwing relaxed a little and began preening the tight black curls above Falcon’s ear, one round, intelligent eye still fixed on Fury with suspicion.  
Fury glared back at the bird for a moment, nonplussed.  
  
“Fine,”  Fury said, turning back to Steve,  “-so while you two were enjoyin’ the sunburn, sand an’ local hostilities, you’re tellin’ me that back at the ranch,  _Tony tha fuckin’ riveter_  took on the RED SKULL armed with nothin’ but his winnin’ personality, an’ his trusty pair o’  _handcuffs?_ ”  
  
Tony shrugged modestly, and gave Steve a dazzling smile… to avoid making eye contact of  _any_ kind with Colonel Fury.  
  
“Yeah, it was pretty cool,”  Peter cut in,  “-but by the time I got there answering, you know, the danger signal thing Tony had activated earlier, the Red Skull was trying to saw Tony’s head off with the handcuff chain, so I smashed ‘im over the head with a lamp-”  Peter illustrated this with a lassoing-and-pulling motion of his hands, “-and then we held a very painful game of keep-away with the Cosmic Cube until Tony woke up again, and then HE took the Cube…”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, and then you LOST the son of a bitch!”  Fury snarled, cutting him off quickly lest Spider-man go over the entire battle blow by blow … _again_.  
  
“He didn’t esc-!”  (cough, cough)  Tony began, angrily.  
  
“The Red Skull was left sealed in a high-pressure barometric chamber, sir,”  Steve translated,  “-if he’d managed to get it open from the inside, the pressure change- -well, he wouldn’t have survived.  The garage was broken into before the police arrived though, so we think the Red Skull had an accomplice who came back for him just after Spider-man and Tony left…”  
  
Fury pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb, and ground out the butt of his cigar in the unused white saucer of his coffee cup.  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 2:40 PM.  
  
  
“You said you had a new song for me?”  Steve asked, coming downstairs in a sky-blue T-shirt and jeans.  
  
“Just new to the jukebox,” Tony replied, looking up from some papers on his desk with a smile.  The timbre of his voice was almost back to normal, but the bruise across his throat was still ugly, a shaded bar of purples, yellows and greens.  …It had been close.  
 _  
Too_  close, part of Steve’s mind muttered uneasily.  
  
“Do you want to dance?”  Steve asked.  
  
“Definitely,” Tony nodded, “-hang on,”  he shuffled the papers into a pile, and stuck his pencil behind his ear.    
  
There was always an open space in front of the jukebox Steve noticed, no matter how many motorcycles the garage held.  He knew  _why_ … he’d seen (sometimes helped) Tony stumble in barely charged after too many missions not to…  but he still thought of it as _their_  dance floor.  
  
Tony leaned one hand against the jukebox and pushed the required buttons, his back towards Steve.  He was wearing a short sleeve collared shirt that he’d bought in Jamaica unbuttoned over one of his whiter A-lines, and a pair of clean blue jeans with a small stain of dribbled epoxy along the outside of the right knee.  
Steve thought about sliding a hand around either side of Tony’s waist, and pressing a kiss against the back of his neck.    
…He didn’t do it, though.  
  
Tony’s song began with five individual guitar notes, a relatively slow drum score, and a complex, cascading shimmer of something light, with bells.  Underneath it was a scattering of subtle, clear sounds that Steve  _knew_ were probably made instrumentally, yet still reminded him of the beeps of Hank’s lab computer.  
  
 _‘I am a lineman for the county.  
And I drive the mainroad-’_  
  
Tony joined Steve on the dance floor and offered the blonde his hand, palm upwards.    
Steve put his hand in Tony’s, and they danced.    
  
 _‘Searchin’ in the sun for another overload-’_  
  
Steve had to suppress a snort at this, and only  _mostly_ succeeded.  Tony shot him an annoyed look, and changed direction on him with abrupt skill.  
 _  
‘I hear you singing in the wire.  
I can hear you thru the whine.  
And the Wichita Lineman,   
is still on the line-’_  
  
The song’s oddly new/old shimmer came and went, wrapping itself around the drums and vocals in bright, lingering bursts.  Steve delayed a back step momentarily.  Tony stepped in closer at the invitation, then maintained the new distance.  He felt the warmth of the left side of Steve’s face in the air near his, and smiled quietly.  
 _  
‘I know I need a small vacation-’_  
  
Another stifled snicker from Steve.  
Tony stepped on his foot pointedly, still smiling.  
Steve suffered a brief relapse, then collected himself during the next few bars.  
 _  
‘-But it don’t look like rain.  
And if it snows that stretch down south,  
won’t ever stand the strain.’_  
  
They were moving together again now, moving as only Steve could -make- them move.  Tony felt his eyes beginning to slip closed, remembered abruptly that he was the one _leading_ , and opened them.  
  
 _‘And I need you more than want you.  
And I want you for all time-’_  
  
Tony’s back tensed reflexively.  He’d known those lines were coming, he’d just forgotten how  _soon_.  
  
 _‘-And the Wichita Lineman,  
is still on the line…’_  
  
Steve timed his steps to open the distance between them again, and looked into Tony’s face silently as the last four lines repeated as an ending chorus.    
Tony’s feet never faltered.  He was too scared to think about them.  
 _‘Wichita Lineman’_  trailed to a close, and the jukebox clicked off, leaving the garage in silence.  
  
“So,” Tony said casually, “-what do you think?”  
  
Steve kissed him for a second or two, and smiled.  
  
“-Play it again,” he instructed.  
  
“All right,” Tony grinned, disengaging, “-did you want to lead this time?”  
  
“You can do math backwards in your head,” Steve shrugged, “-I can do this.”  
  
“Fair enough,” Tony nodded.  
  
He entered ‘C-11’ on the selector keypad, then pressed ‘PLAY’.

-


	4. Chapter 4

-

Avengers Tower training room, 4:37 AM.  
  
  
The scent hit him at the door.  
It wasn’t a perfume nor strictly sweet, but it brought the changing room of a cabaret he’d once visited in the thirties to mind with such vivid clarity that Steve felt his face flush.  
Dyed ostrich feathers, obscuring the view, then moving away to the cadence of swaying hips.  A bouquet of dried roses, standing in a vase at the end of a long make-up table.  The brush of warm, bare shoulders hurrying by him to get to the stage, and the smell of powder, and greasepaint.  The whisper of silk, and the quiet, tight creak of corset-ribs.  Painted lips, and rouged cheeks.  Winking amusement in dark brown eyes outlined with something black, like Cleopatra.  
Wigs.  The click of hard-heeled shoes in poorly lit connecting passages, and the glare of the lights around the all-important mirrors, drawing beautiful, costumed women like a troop of butterflies.  And this  _scent_ …  
  
Steve shut his eyes, forgetting for a split-second that the scent didn’t -belong- here.  
Then he heard quiet, desperately-controlled breathing and whirled around, shield upraised. 

…Floating high up in the nearer left-hand corner of the room in what looked like a split-second attempt to hide, were Wanda and Warbird.  …Though Steve supposed that having seen this  _much_  of her, he might as well find out what Warbird’s first name was…  
Suddenly aware that he was openly  _staring_  at the lovely, entwined shape his female teammates made, Steve turned around abruptly, the blush on his face and ears deepening.  
  
“I, uh…” (ahem) “-pardon me.”  
  
Wanda stifled a giggle.  
  
“…Oh my god…”  Warbird muttered, her voice almost lost against the soft skin of Wanda’s shoulder.  Then louder she added, “-Cap- -we didn’t mean to- -we thought the gym would be empty at this hour.  I’m not going to try and explain the rest.”  
  
“Well…”  Steve smiled, keeping his eyes firmly on the vaulting horse across from him, “…as you were, ladies.”  
  
He turned and walked out of the room a little stiffly, closing the door behind him.  
  
-  
  
Tony’s kitchen, 6:55 AM.  
  
  
“Where are my Corn Pops?  Peter asked, head stuck in the refrigerator.  
  
“No idea,” Steve replied, looking up from his newspaper with amusement.  
  
“Dammit, I thought if I put them in the crisper when I went home, he wouldn’t…”  Peter muttered, choosing a banana off the bunch on the counter instead.  
  
Tony wandered in, unshaven and still stretching.  He wore a large pair of dark blue NYPD sweat pants, and nothing else.  
  
In the center of his chest, the arc reactor shimmered pale blue within its brushed steel casing.  
  
“Good morning,” said Steve, smiling.  
  
“DIE, Corn Pop thief,” said Peter, pointing.  
  
“Those were yours?”  Tony frowned.  He slipped a hand around the back of Steve’s neck in a caress without looking.  
  
“As you knew very well!”  Peter accused.  
  
“You know, if you put an open bag of Corn Pops in the crisper, the condensation-” Tony began, slipping into lecture mode.  
  
“No.  You are avoiding the issue.  Crispy or not, those pops were MINE,” Peter insisted.  
  
“-Don’t you have school today?”  Tony asked, glancing up at the cat clock above the doorway.  
  
“Tony, it’s -Tuesday-.  I only have that class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”  
  
“Mmm.  Must have slipped my mind,” Tony reflected, and bent down to give Steve a good-morning kiss.  
  
“You are playing  _dirty_ ,” Peter complained before the relatively brief kiss had ended, “-and that does NOT help a hungry spider…”  
  
“-Or shut him up any more, apparently,” Tony observed, straightening.    
  
“I could make oatmeal,” Steve offered, folding his newspaper.  
  
“Um…”  Peter began, tactfully.  
  
“How does cinnamon toast grab you?”  Tony suggested, instead.  
  
“That would be cool,” Peter agreed.  
  
He waited a moment until he was sure Tony was actually  _moving_  in the general direction of the toaster, then sat down next to Steve, and bent an elbow on the table.  
  
“So, Steve, um… what are we doing tonight?”  
  
“Luke heard about a smuggling ring on the East docks we should look into.  We’re meeting at seven on the pier where you fought Doc Ock last summer.”  
  
“-The new one,” Peter nodded, “-right.”    
  
“I’m going to be out of the shop most of the day,” Steve added, reaching for his coffee cup.  
  
“Oh yeah, you’ve got that new Avenger induction ceremony…  How did War Machine get picked for that, anyway?”  Peter asked curiously, beginning to peel and eat the banana he’d grabbed earlier.  
  
“Why because he’s a  _superhero_  of course,” Tony cut in, cheerfully sarcastic, “-dont’cha read the papers?”    
  
“He helped us against the Mandarin’s henchmen last week,” Steve answered Peter,  “-he also stopped Attuma’s forces when they tried to sneak into the Atlantic through the Panama Canal, and he backed up Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch when the Lava-men had them pinned down on 48th st.-”  
  
“-Was that before, or  _after_  Morgan started using the Maria Stark foundation to repair the damage to the city from super-powered battles?”  Tony interrupted, punctuating his point with a used butter knife.  
  
“Both, I think,” Steve said after a pause, “-but that had nothing to  _do_  with how I voted on War Machine, and you know it.”  
  
Tony sighed, and lapsed into unhappy silence.  
  
“The  _Maria Stark_ …”  Peter paused, “-wait, isn’t- -you’re related to Morgan Stark?  _That_ Morgan Stark?”  
  
“Distantly.  Very,  _very_  distantly,” Tony ground out.  
  
“First cousins on his father’s side,” Steve translated.  
  
Tony flicked a small glob of butter off the knife-blade at him.  
  
“O-kay, that’s… wow,” Peter acknowledged, grimly.  
  
“I’m not concerned with Morgan Stark,” Steve put in, licking the dollop of butter off the back of his left hand, “-War Machine is the one I have to work with, he’s shown himself to be A-okay so far.  He’s rough around the edges, but with a boss like that I’ll bet he has to be.  …He reminds me a lot of  _you_  actually,” Steve added, looking at Tony’s back.  
  
“He’s -supposed- to, he’s wearing MY ARMOR,” Tony pointed out.   
  
“He thinks Morgan invented it,” said Steve.  
  
“I’m sure he does,” Tony snorted.  
  
He put a large plate of toast and a dish of oddly tan-looking (sugar/cinnamon) butter in the center of the table.  Tony took a piece of toast for himself, and held it in his mouth by one corner while he went back for plates.  
Peter pointed to a piece of toast on the top of the pile.  
  
“It’s not just me, is it?  There’s a spider-web toast-stamp on this.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” Tony smirked.  
  
“You have way too much time on your hands,” Peter observed.  
  
Tony put the plates down, and took back the plate of toast.  Steve discreetly used his longer reach to snag a piece anyway.  
  
“…Though it does look pretty cool, and um- -thanks for thinking of me?”  Peter amended, smiling winningly.  
  
The toast was returned.  Tony poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot Steve had been drinking, and joined them at the breakfast table.  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 2:26 AM.  
  
  
Tony sliced a sharp metal edge off of the faceplate of his new helmet, and held it up to the light, gleaming gray.  The shapes came easily to him now, so different from the first time, or even from when he’d cut the Mark II out of an old red classic car body without altering the angles of some of the fairings…  
 _God_ , that thing had sucked power.  -He’d spent as much time skating as he had flying.  
The scratch-built Mark III had been the first suit that was really as dangerous to his enemies as it was to himself, and he still had it in storage, repaired and re-sealed after his near-disastrous battle with the Black Knight over an airship moored above the East River.  
  
With the Mark IV, he’d finally gotten the internal shock-absorption and padding system figured out, which meant he no longer had to live in a fading tattoo of mechanically-shaped bruises, or keep  _quite_  so many ice packs in the freezer of the downstairs fridge.  When he’d crossed paths with the Hulk two months later, that upgrade had certainly saved his life…  
The Mark V had been in some ways a stylistic throwback to the Mark II, but he’d returned to the hinged plate rather than telescoping design to allow for the use of a hollow-ceramic microbead alloy that could take almost _any_  punishment as long as it wasn’t chafed or rasped, and thus needed to be encased in an inner and outer layer of metal.  
…Or in the case of the Mark VI, an outer layer of cryogenically-tempered metal, and a far lighter inner coating of _Teflon_ …  
His current Mark VII armor had included a lot of aerodynamics and articulation improvements, as well as dabbling with solar power for extended flight range.  
Steve had said that one looked ‘snappy’.  
  
The Mark VIII would have many of the improvements of its predecessors, but one or two would be conspicuously absent, and certain plates in the arms and shoulders had been subtly thickened and contoured around an entirely  _new_ weapon, almost brutal in its simplicity…  
Unlike every suit of armor Tony had built since the fateful Mark I, the Mark VIII was designed to take down one specific opponent.  
Hopefully Steve was right about him, but if not…  Tony would be ready.  
  
-  
  
The Theatre District, 9:20 PM.  
  
  
Harry ran.  
He didn’t know what was happening behind him, except that it was a superhero battle and many things were blowing up, and Peter had gone back to help someone.  Part of Harry cringed at that thought, but he had Mary Jane running beside him, red hair loose, the square heels of her shoes loud on the concrete, and she changed everything.  
Peter wouldn’t  _want_  Harry to come back, until he could be sure MJ was safe.  
Harry ran, and felt like a coward anyway.  
  
Finally the explosions sounded more faintly, and the streets were unnaturally empty of traffic.  -New Yorkers drove with their radios on for a reason, and they could vanish like cockroaches at the flick of a light switch if a battle advisory was called.  
Harry and MJ ducked into an alley to catch their breath, still shaken.  
  
“Are- -you okay?”  Harry asked, hand on the brick wall beside him.  
  
“-Yes,” MJ nodded.  “Harry- - _Peter_ …”  
  
“I know- -I’m going back for him,” Harry assured her.  
  
“Spider-Man is there-” MJ began.  “Do you think he-?“  
  
“I saw him web you out of the way just before that marquee fell,”  Harry nodded,  “-I swear I think I my heart stopped-   
-Spider-Man’s busy with that guy on the glider though…”  
  
MJ’s face wavered as she looked at him, torn but resolute.  Tonight she risked losing both of them, but Harry was right, he couldn’t leave Peter.   _They_ couldn’t leave Peter.  
If she begged him to, Harry would probably stay here with her, safe.  She knew what buttons to push.  If she did that and Peter died though, it would destroy Harry from the inside out.  Harry had to go, and she had to stay here.  MJ had faced this reality before, and she still wasn’t sure who was getting the better end of the deal.  
For now though-  
  
“Harry?  
  
“Yes?  
  
“Don’t be a hero,” she kissed him then, hands cupping his face, and rising slightly on tiptoe to meet him at eye level. “-Just   
go get Peter.”  
  
Harry paused for a moment, lips parted.  Then he nodded quickly, and headed back the way they had come.  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 2:41 PM.  
  
  
“Yep,” Tony said, inspecting the fragment of circuit board still attached to the handful of wires on his desk, “-this is definitely Ostech.”  
  
“But how would the Green Goblin get ahold of a SHIELD glider in the first place?”  Peter wanted to know.  
  
“Well that’s the question, isn’t it…?”  Tony agreed, setting his jeweler’s glass down on the desk and leaning back in his chair a little.  
  
“Hmm…”  Peter frowned, chin in hand.  
  
Tony reached over and pressed Peter’s forehead with two fingers.  
Peter swung back and forth on his webline like an irritated pendulum.  He favored Tony with a dubious look, then put out his hand upside-down to the corner of the desk, and stopped himself.  
  
“Pre- existing technology can be bought, copied, given, or stolen,” Tony reviewed, “-and there’s no way the Goblin’s glider was built by an amateur.  -This soldering’s too clean.  Either Norman’s been dealing under the table, or the Goblin stole something and SHIELD either doesn’t know yet or has decided to cover it up.  And that last one wouldn’t surprise me.  Nick  _hates_  looking like he can’t control his own weapons…”  
  
“-Even when it’s true,” Peter observed, folding his arms.  
  
“ _Especially_  when it’s true,” Tony nodded.    
  
He turned around and rummaged in one of the middle drawers of the tall tan filing cabinet, coming up with what appeared to be the manual for a commercial air conditioning unit circa 1964.  
When he pressed a small metal stud on the side of his desk-lamp though, the desk light switched to a dim, pale-violet color, and a cleanly-drawn circuit diagram appeared on the yellowed pages of the manual in thin lines of luminescent blue.    
  
“Now what you grabbed was  _here_ ,” Tony began, flipping a few pages forwards and pointing to a newly-revealed diagram labeled ‘fuel system’.  “-These four white wires connect the fuel injection system to the throttle module over  _here_ , and the black one’s there for timing control.  This little white one with the red collar’s just there to record engine time, so that wasn’t important.”  
  
“And since this fuel flow valve defaults to ‘full open’ when there’s no current,” Peter said, pointing awkwardly around Tony’s hand to the appropriate place on the diagram, “-it basically flooded his engine.”  
  
“Exactly.  That’s why he started trailing half-burned fuel and losing altitude so fast.  The fuel mixture was spraying all over his igniter array, and  _vaporizing_  more than it was actually combusting, so he couldn’t get good compression.”  
  
“Yeah, I get it.  Um… Tony?”  
  
“Yes?”  Tony looked up.  
  
“Why do you have the plans to the SHIELD glider?  I mean… that _is_  illegal, right?”  
  
  
Tony sighed.  
  
“Peter, no knowledge is actually -bad-, it’s just in how people use it.  I don’t use other people’s designs without permission unless I absolutely have to, but obviously it’s still a good idea to understand the technology that’s out there,” Tony explained, reasonably.  “-There’s nothing illegal in _knowledge_.”   
  
“But SHIELD could still totally arrest you for having these plans, right?”  Peter pressed.  
  
“Uh… yes.  But they would  _make_  the arrest on the assumption that I was planning to build or sabotage one.”  
  
“Don’t um, get sent to jail okay?”  Peter suggested, helpfully.  
  
“I’m doing my best, Spider,” Tony assured him, slightly touched but mostly just annoyed by the remark.  
  
“Tony?”  Peter began, hesitantly.  
  
“ _Yes?_ ”  Tony answered, testily.  
  
“You’re… good at keeping secrets, right?”  
  
“…Why?”  
  
“When do you- -not keep secrets?”  Peter asked, vaguely.  
  
“Peter…”  Tony paused, stood up, and rubbed his own forehead, “-sit down, will you?”  
  
Peter chose a high, swivel-topped stool from in front of Tony’s workbench, dragged it over, and perched on it.    
  
Tony put the plans back in the filing cabinet, and thought for a moment.  
The webwork on the ceiling above Peter- (that, come hell or high water the boy  _would_  have cleaned off before the garage opened tomorrow) -looked rough.  Half-assed and compulsively repaired, with only four original frame-threads crisscrossing in the center to create a base-eight web, and a slight unevenness in the squaring of the spiral.  
Tony chose a beer and a Coke out of the refrigerator, and handed the Coke to Peter.  He sat back in his desk chair, and crossed his boots on the desk beside the phone book.  
  
“All right, run that by me again?”  Tony waved a hand at him in a ‘roll tape’ motion.  
  
  
Peter fidgeted with his Coke, but as always, was too polite to bolt before he finished it.  
  
“I… I’ve always gone on the theory that the less my friends and family, you know, the civilian ones, knew about my caped crusades, the safer they would be, but um… it doesn’t always work out that way.”  
  
“What happened?”  Tony asked, quickly.  
  
“Nothing!  I mean… nobody was hurt this time…”  Peter passed the bottle from his left hand to his right, but still didn’t drink.  
  
“So… what almost happened?”  Tony asked, relaxing a bit.  
  
“Harry came back to rescue me when I fought the Green Goblin downtown the other night.  I mean, he didn’t know I was Spider-Man, he was just looking for Peter Parker, and since I was in costume at the time, of course he _couldn’t_ find me, and uh… Tony, he could have died.  I mean… easily.”  
  
“Hrmm…”  Tony nodded gravely, and took a pull on his beer.  
  
“And Mary Jane- -thank god Harry had the sense to get her to safety first, but she was worried about me  _too_ , and…  You _know_  how my enemies love grabbing her…  What if it’s just her and me next time?  Or if Harry-” Peter broke off, and sighed.  
  
“You’re right, that’s a problem,” Tony agreed.  
  
“So what do I do?”  Peter demanded,  “-if I tell them I’m Spider-Man, my enemies will have that much more reason to kidnap them, and if I don’t Harry’ll keep putting himself in danger for me every time I have to pull a quick-change…”  
  
“There is no right answer, Peter,” Tony admitted with a sigh, “-it’s a percentages game.  I’ve held a good man while he -died- from bullets he got protecting my identity as Iron Man.”  
  
“Yinsen.”  
  
“Yeah.  But I’ve also had people try and blackmail me, get close to me to steal my designs, wait to attack me until I was out of costume, attack whoever I was  _dating_  out of costume…  I was seeing this court stenographer once.  Lovely black girl with plum-colored lipstick before it really caught on, and these  _eyes_ … she wore glasses with cats-eye frames, but they just kinda emphasized it…  we met while Matt was putting the Rhino away the second time…”  Tony held up two fingers.  
  
Peter kept his silence.  
  
“Well… anyway, the Exeter thought he was going to be implicated, found out who I was, and ah… not  _knowing_ who I was didn’t protect Carmen.”  
  
“Ouch,” Peter acknowledged, quietly.  
  
“Yeah…”  Tony didn’t elaborate.    
  
He didn’t elaborate on what he had done -afterwards-, either.  Peter would have been in eighth grade at the time, and the sickening fear of that high-speed chase though the oncoming the traffic inside the Holland tunnel wasn’t something Tony wanted to describe out loud even to a college freshman.  
…Even aside from the nauseating crunch of the British villain’s bones and jetpack slamming together into the cooling unit of a cab-over semi-truck at a combined velocity of over 120 miles per hour…  
No.  Peter didn’t need to hear that part.    
Tony took a breath.  
  
“It’s a guessing game, Peter.  It’s a horrible, unfair, and -deadly- crapshoot.  You just… think of all the logical contributing factors you can, think about the personalities involved, and who they are  _really_  and… You wing it.  And then you fucking pray.”  
Tony took another pull on his beer.  
  
“…Ah,” Peter swallowed, and did the same with his Coke.  
  
“Chin up, Spider.  You’re still alive, aren’t you?”  Tony pointed out.  
  
“-It’s a lot easier to tell someone who you are when you’ve both got powers, isn’t it?”  Peter said, shrewdly.  
  
Tony smiled at him.  
  
-  
  
Tony’s bedroom, 10:40 PM.  
  
  
“Steve…?”  Tony began, both palms flat against Steve’s chest.  
  
“Yeah?”  Steve asked, glancing up at him.  
  
“I was wondering something…”  
  
“Shoot,” Steve smiled.  
  
“Can I do something to your shield?”  Tony asked, looking slightly mischievous.  
  
“It’s not a _target_ , Tony,” Steve replied, shortly.  
  
“Actually, that wasn’t what I had in mind.  …But that means people have asked you if they could use your shield for obscene target practice before, doesn’t it?”  
  
“…I don’t want to talk about it,” Steve sighed.  
  
“Well, it’d be easier to clean than armor,” Tony reflected, philosophically.  
  
“But it’s still ME-!”  Steve blurted out.  “-I mean… not literally, but it… have you ever been hit with small rocks, fruit, eggs-?”  
  
“I got egged in my armor once,” Tony nodded.  
  
“Well that’s how it would feel.  Like it was my face they were hitting instead of my shield.  …I just don’t like the idea, even in fun,” Steve explained, frowning.  
  
“I will not intentionally come on your shield,” Tony promised, and kissed him on the nose.    
  
…Though it went without saying that by resting as close to the bed as it did, the shield took its chances.  
  
“…What  _did_  you want with my shield, then?”  Steve asked, cautiously optimistic.  
  
“I wanted to lay on it,” Tony replied, “-on my back.”  
  
“Oh.  Well, that would be all right,” Steve agreed, with a relieved smile.  He patted Tony’s hip one-handed.  “-Scoot.”  
  
Tony grinned, and slid off of Steve to the side, letting him up.  
Steve stretched off the bed in a way that had to be illegal  _somewhere_ , and retrieved his shield from its place against the bedside table.  
Tony watched both man and shield return to the bed with close attention.  
Steve paused, glancing over at Tony’s face just  _one_  more time to be sure he wasn’t letting his shield in for anything nasty.  Tony looked reasonably trustworthy, if just a little… keen on the whole thing.  
Steve set his shield down on the sheets, star up.  
Tony glanced at Steve with a lopsided smile of secret delight, and ran his hand over the shield’s barely-textured surface, like an Egyptologist brushing the sand from a row of inscribed hieroglyphics.    
Then he sat with his back to it, bottom not quite -on- the shield, and slowly, slowly leaned back.    
  
“Ah-!”  The metal was cool, not exactly cold, and it adhered slightly to the faint sheen of nervous sweat along the crease of Tony’s spine.  The metal warmed quickly against his skin.   _  
Damn_  this thing must be conductive, Tony thought, with a faint shiver.  
  
“It is,” Steve told him, evenly.    
  
Tony blinked, not realizing he’d spoken aloud, then shut his eyes as he felt Steve’s fingers gently cupping the back of his neck, lowering him down the rest of the way.  Tony’s back popped twice, and he groaned softly.  
  
“…I knew it,” he sighed happily, eyes still closed, “-it’s _just_  the right angle…”  
  
Steve laughed, and ran his hand along Tony’s chest and side, feeling the ways the addition of the shield had opened the familiar angles.  
…How would these contours shift if Tony lay over the shield on his side?  Or forwards- -but then the shield would put too much pressure on Tony’s arc reactor…  unless the shield was moved down… which would, Steve thought with a covert blush, look far too much like an invitation.  And… The same would be true if Tony sat on the shield and lay down as he was now from _that_ position, come to think of it…  
Steve felt vaguely uneasy, and… Very, very turned on.  
Tony was still smiling sleepily, and watching him from between not-quite-closed dark eyelashes.  
  
“-You planned this,” Steve realized.  
  
“…Can I help it if your brain is a physical probability engine?”  Tony grinned, stretching his arms up above his head and arching his back against the shield a little.  
  
  
“Get up,” Steve ordered.  
  
Tony paused, frowning, and looked up to see if the blonde was serious.  
Steve was.  
Tony sighed disappointedly, sat up, and rubbed the back of his neck.  
  
“Sit up on your knees in the middle of the bed, and close your eyes,” Steve instructed.  
  
Tony’s eyes flicked to Steve’s face with intense curiosity, then closed.  He knelt in the indicated spot, and waited.  Steve had his shield in hand now, Tony could hear it the by the soft squeak of the brown leather arm-straps.    
Why brown leather?  Tony wondered suddenly.  Why  _brown_  straps, when everything else leather on Steve’s costume had been dyed red, white or blue?  
Steve’s hand touched his wrist, and Tony could feel the other man’s breath whisper against the back of his neck.  Tony’s unspoken question was lost.  
  
“If you want to play with this shield,” Steve began quietly, “-you have to understand what it is first.”    
  
He guided the fingers of Tony’s right hand around one of the arm straps, and closed them.  The leather was  _thick_ , two identical plies of cowhide machine-stitched together, worn smooth in places from daily use, and heavy as a damned -horse- collar in Tony’s hand…  
Tony swallowed, quietly.  
  
“You have to understand what it’s a part of, and I don’t just mean me,” Steve said calmly, raising Tony’s arms up by the wrists.  
  
“All right…?”  Tony managed, a little breathlessly.  
  
“You have to know that it’s an unrepeatable experiment,” Steve continued, the corner of his cleft chin -just- scratching the back of Tony’s neck down near his shoulders.  “-And that there’s not another like it in the world.  If something happens to this shield… …it can never be replaced.”   
  
“Okay…”  Tony breathed, steadying a little.  
  
Steve began fitting Tony’s hands through the arm straps above his head.  
  
“…You have to know where it’s been.  You have to understand that it’s saved my life.  You have to know that men have  _seen_  this shield when they thought they were utterly defeated, and the sight of it kept them fighting…”  
  
Steve slid the shield down to the level of Tony’s elbows, effectively trapping him.  
  
“You have to know that I’ve condoned its use for a pillow, a lunch-table, an umbrella, an operating table, and a children’s sled…”  
  
The straps slid lower, almost to the level of Tony’s shoulders…  
  
“You have to know that I’ve cleaned blood-spatters off it, and paint, and vanilla ice cream, and tiny smears of lead from bullets, and some stuff from the floor of a barn that I’d rather not discuss…”  
  
Lower, and Tony felt the smooth, hard edge of the metal resting against the base of his neck, and against the muscles at the small of his back.  
  
“And most of all, you have to know what it feels like… on,” Steve finished, and put his hands on Tony’s shoulders.  Then softly, “-put your arms down.”  
  
Tony folded his arms down loosely at his sides, and felt the full weight of the shield settle squarely across his shoulders for the first time.  
It felt… Tony couldn’t put it into words, but he thought first of ‘the soul of the sword’, the legend that a samurai’s will had to be  _stronger_  than that of his sword, or the sword would wield -him-.  
He thought next of the air show at which he’d first seen the Thunderbirds, and the way the mighty roar of the F-84F Thunderstreaks’ jet engines had drowned out the music of the band, the shimmer of the sun on hot black tarmac, the scent of freshly-made caramel-popcorn…  leaving only the feel of the wind against his face.  
He thought of the strange, not-quite-acknowledged sensation he sometimes got while plugged into the city’s power grid, that supralogical instinct that he was now part of a gestalt electrical nervous system far greater than the one in his body alone…  
Tony felt the steadying weight of Steve’s big hands around his shoulders…   
…And breathed.  
  
  
“Open your eyes,” Steve smiled, against the back of Tony’s hair.  
  
Tony did so, and blinked a little.  
  
“How does it feel?”  Steve asked.  
  
“It’s… heavy,” Tony replied, sounding surprised.  
  
“Its ten and a half pounds, without the straps,” Steve countered, not quite laughing against his ear.  
  
“Ah… well, it _feels_  heavy…”  Tony fumbled, “-are you leaning on it?”  He frowned.  
  
“No,” Steve laughed.  
  
“Maybe the Vibranium’s capable of preserving some kind of wave-harmonic record…”  Tony said thoughtfully, not sounding half as coherent as he thought he did.  
  
“You mean what if my shield remembers where it’s been?”  Steve translated, easily.  
  
“Well, obviously it doesn’t have those kinds of conscious connections, but with the little-understood kinetic absorption properties of Vibranium, it might well contain some kind of static after-image, like a- -like the way light and shadow come up on photographic paper, only with a different part of the energy spectrum,”  Tony explained, defensively.  
  
“Could be,” Steve agreed carefully, and pressed a kiss against the side of Tony’s neck.  
  
“Cap-?”  Tony began, sounding a little breathless.  
  
“Yes?”  Steve murmured.  
  
“A- -are you trying to record something?”  
  
“Are you still up for it?”  Steve asked, not pressuring him.  
  
“Are you  _kidding_?”  Tony demanded, looking back over his shoulder with a slightly wild light in his eyes.  
  
“So that’s a yes?”  Steve grinned, folding his arms around Tony’s chest, shield and all.  
  
“Definitely- -ohhh, I can feel your  _body heat_ through it…”  Tony sighed, closing his eyes.  
  
“Do you want to keep it on?”  Steve asked.  
  
“Actually… no,” Tony admitted, drawing back a little, “-the shield is, ah… yours.  And besides, the lower edge of the metal is really digging into my back here…”  
  
“It does that,” Steve nodded wryly.  
  
  
Tony shrugged out of the shoulder straps on his second try, and Steve guided the shield the rest of the way down off of his arms.  He set the shield aside, and gathered Tony back against his chest, skin to skin.  
  
“Mmmm… this feels better without metal in the way,” Steve smiled against Tony’s shoulder.  
  
“I could make a case f’r either one,” Tony sighed, leaning back happily.  
  
“How about we try cracking your back again?”  Steve suggested, not quite innocently.  
  
“-I like the way you think,” Tony decided, with a piratical grin.  
  
Steve let him go, and Tony spread himself back over the hard, smooth curve of the shield.  There were slight breaks in texture between the different colors of the shield’s stars-and-stripes design, but the skin on his back wouldn’t be sensitive enough to- -oh goddamn, he  _could_  feel the imprint… of the star, at least…  
  
Steve ran both hands up along Tony’s chest, thumbs dividing around the casing of the arc reactor and smoothly rubbing around the skin at its base.  Tony caught his breath suddenly, and grabbed Steve’s shoulders, eyes open.  
Steve’s fingers curled around Tony’s collarbone, then slid back down his entire torso along the same path, and traced up the backs of his thighs.  
  
“Hnn…”  Tony whimpered, kneading Steve’s shoulders encouragingly.  
  
“Heheh…”  Steve leaned in, and nuzzled the base of Tony’s ribcage.  This close to the reactor’s power sockets, he could feel the faintest brush of a static charge against the outer edge of his hair…  
  
“ _Steve-_ ” Tony’s fingers found the back of Steve’s head, and-  
  
The phone rang.  
Not the regular phone either, but the black one just under the edge of the bed beside Tony’s emergency backup battery.  
Steve groaned, and pressed his face against Tony’s abs in denial.  
  
“God…  _dammit_ -!”  Tony swore, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily.  
  
Steve sighed, and let him up.  
  
Tony rolled off the shield, and thrust his hand down off the edge of the bed with a bestial snarl.  
  
“ _YES?_ ”  He answered, through gritted teeth.  
  
Pause.  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
Pause.  
  
“Moleman- -why…?”  Tony whined, raking his wavy black bangs out of his eyes with one hand.  
  
Pause.  
  
“All right, all right… -fuck-…”  
  
Pause.  
  
“-Up yours, Luke!”  Tony yelled back, and slammed the receiver down hard.  
  
Steve sighed again, and reached for his pants.  
  
"You know Steve, I feel like doing some real violence out there today…"  Tony vented, fishing a pair of boxer shorts out of his top dresser drawer.  
  
“Well, the sooner we get this done…”  Steve began, philosophically.  
  
-  
  
Tony’s kitchen, 6:20 AM.  
  
  
Peter poured himself a glass of milk by the blinding light of the refrigerator, and slumped into one of the seats at the kitchen table.  He pulled off his mask, and drank.  
Ten minutes later, Tony wandered out scratching the side of his jaw.  He turned on the light, and started.  
  
“Hi Tony,” Peter greeted him, miserably.  
  
Tony frowned at him for a moment.  There didn’t seem to be any signs of visible injury or madness, so he patted Peter’s shoulder, and wandered past him towards the coffee-maker.  
  
“What’cha doing sitting in the dark, Spider?”  Tony asked, spooning ground coffee into the filter.  
  
“I got here early, and I didn’t want to wake you,” Peter shrugged.  
  
“Smart boy,” Tony muttered.  He filled the carafe with water from the tap, and poured it in.    
  
“I told Harry,” Peter said, studying a scratch on the worn white paint of the tabletop.  
  
Tony glanced back at him.  He replaced the carafe, and pressed the ‘on’ switch.  
  
“Like that, is it?”  He asked, turning.  
  
“I… don’t really know yet,” Peter admitted, in a voice that sounded dangerously close to cracking.  “I told him, and… at first he was just shocked, you know?  And then he was like, ‘that’s cool, man,’ and… Then I went over how that was why I kept disappearing, and why I never said anything to MJ, and- -then he got upset and said I shouldn’t have treated him like a child, and I said-” Peter broke off, and sighed.  He ran a hand back through his damp, mask-flattened hair.  “Well… Harry spent the night at his dad’s house.”  
  
“That’s not good,” Tony agreed, remembering Peter’s friend’s eagerness to please and talkative nature.  
  
“Do you think Mr. Osborne would-?”  
  
“Norman Osborne can kiss my ass,”  Tony said bluntly,  “-if he tries to blackmail you with your secret identity, we’ve got the wiring you ripped out of the Goblin Glider with part of an Ostech circuit board attached, and it’s all hearsay at this point anyway.  -Keep an extra careful eye out for being tailed for the next month or so, though.”  
  
Peter nodded, and drank some of his milk.  
  
“Have you seen that guy in black on the hover board again?”  Tony asked, getting up and starting a round of pancakes.  
  
“No, not since last Friday.  I didn’t follow him then because I had Harry with me, and it’s not like this guy’s  _done_  anything, that I know of…  Between us, I don’t think I would have caught him anyway.  He was there and gone in a moment, like this shadow racing across the moon…”  
  
-  
  
Outside the Iron Horse Garage, 8:43 AM (same day).  
  
  
Harry waited uneasily, leaning against the hood of his car.    
It was already too hot for the jacket he held folded over his arm, but that jacket, like the pastel button-down shirt he was wearing, had been chosen for going out the night before, not for the harsh light of a New York morning.  He should have been in class almost an hour ago.  Harry had driven for a long time the night before, driven until his eyes were dry again, and when he stopped in the parking lot of a harbor overlook, the yellow-white glare of the streetlights no longer spread in his vision like Christmas ornaments.  
  
He was part of a larger world now, and Harry knew without a shadow of a doubt, that he didn’t want any part of it.  
But he did owe Peter an apology.  Superhero or not, Peter was still…  _Peter_ and his friend had only revealed his masked identity in the first place in an attempt to keep  _him_  safe.  It was such a Peter thing to do, in such a deeply fucked-up, innocent, and _twisted_  way…  
Would this have made a difference?    
Would knowing that the only reason Peter had never asked out MJ was because he was a  _masked superhero_  of all things really stopped Harry from dating her?  
Well probably, but it would hardly be fair to break up with her  _now_ , and besides… Harry didn’t want to.  
Were he and MJ really such a bad thing?  
God, as if he hadn’t been living in Peter Parker’s shadow enough…  
A superhero.  
Spider-Man no less, Iron Man’s partner, one of the very institutions of New York City…  
Yet still  _Peter_ , still naive enough to miss what was going on right under his nose, still as much of a target as he had been in high school, but now hunted by far stronger, far deadlier bullies, men with powers of their own, from whom Harry could no longer protect him.  
He was useless.  Again.  Right when he could no longer afford to be.  
…And what if- -what if the Goblin learned who Peter was, and came after MJ?  
Questions pounded in his Harry’s skull like the headache behind his eyes.  He checked his watch again, but it didn’t make the garage door open.  
He sighed, got back in his car, and turned on the radio.  
  
 _‘–black curtains near the station.  
Blackroof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings.  
Silver horses ran down moonbeams in your dark eyes.  
Dawnlight smiles on you leaving, my contentment.  
  
I’ll wait in this place where the sun never shines…  
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves-’_  
  
Darkly appropriate, ironic, and more than a little weird.  
…Harry had the feeling a lot of things were going to be like that now.  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:35 PM.  
  
  
 _‘–You get the picture? (yes, we see)  
That’s when I fell for (the leader of the pack)  
  
My folks were always putting him down (down, down)  
They said he came from the wrong side of town-  
(whatcha mean when ya say that he came from the wrong side of town?)  
They told me he was bad-’_  
  
“No,  _next_ week,” Tony said loudly, “-I told you last Tuesday I couldn’t fit you in before the- -hangonnasecond…”  Tony covered the mouthpiece of the receiver with one hand, and glared at the covey of teenagers clustered around the jukebox.  “OFF,” he ordered, pointedly.  
  
Harry and MJ began a sudden and frantic discussion over how to accomplish this, on a jukebox that was already  _playing_.    
  
 _‘-But I knew he was sad  
That’s why I fell for (the le-’_  
  
Peter opened his mouth as if to join in, closed it, then reached down and unplugged the thick black cord at the back.  The song died in mid-syllable.  Tony gave Peter a thumbs-up, and uncovered the mouthpiece.  
  
“Hey, you still there?”  He began again.  
  
Pause.  
  
“-Yeah,  _after_  the fifteenth.”  Tony picked up a pencil and started writing out a list on a piece of scrap paper.  
  
Pause.  
  
“Could you do Wednesday?”  
  
Pause.  
  
“Yeah, all right.”  
  
Pause.  
  
“No, no, just put ‘em all in a bag, and bring ‘em in.”  
  
Pause.  
  
“Okay, see you then.  Bye,” Tony hung up.  “YOU.  Teenagers with a car…”  He beckoned.  
  
“Me?”  Harry asked, walking over towards the desk.  
  
“No, all of you.  Take this list, and run down to the ‘Pho Tigers Garden’.  It’s that place on- -Peter, you know.”  
  
“Gotcha, boss,” Peter nodded.  
  
“I can’t read Vietnamese,” Harry objected, frowning at the list.  
  
“Never mind, just give this note to Khan when you get there,” Tony assured him.  
  
“-Money?”  Peter reminded Tony, guilelessly.  
  
“Oh, right,” Tony handed Harry a twenty, and the three of them left.  
  
Tony looked around the now -quieter- garage with satisfaction.    
Blonde hair shining gold in the natural lighting up near the entrance, Steve was talking with The Falcon (Sam Wilson, since they were both out of costume) and sketching one of the garage’s more permanent customers.  He was an easygoing older man with slicked back steel-gray hair, a well-worn black leather vest, and a pair of brown-lensed aviator shades.  …How Steve had talked the man into sitting for him Tony wasn’t sure, but he found himself smiling anyway.  
  
Tony advanced on the jukebox, and plugged it back in.  He and pressed ‘COINS’, ‘0’, and ‘PLAY’ together.  The jukebox unselected  _‘Leader of the Pack’_ , and obediently went back into standby mode.  
  
“You guys wanna hear something new?”  Tony called over his shoulder.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam agreed.  
  
“Sure, why not?”  The old man shrugged, turning as he answered and messing up Steve’s drawing perspective once and for all.  
  
“-It’s not by that singer who calls himself ‘Alice’, is it?”  Steve asked, warily.  
  
“No, no, this is somebody else,” Tony promised, pressing ‘A-10’, then ‘PLAY’.  
  
A layered guitar score started, then a slow backbeat with a snare drum in there somewhere…  
  
 _‘Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly  
The spiders from Mars. He played it left hand   
But made it too far  
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy’s band  
  
Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo  
Like some cat from Japan-’_  
  
Sam looked nonplussed, and folded his arms.  
Steve exchanged a glance of complete understanding with the old man, who got up and patted Steve’s shoulder as he gathered his helmet to leave.  
  
“-Good luck there, son.”

-


	5. Chapter 5

-

Tony’s kitchen, 7:33 AM.  
  
  
Steve studied the slightly blurred green and purple image on the front page of the newspaper in front of him.  The amateurish photo had been taken from below and at a distance, and it captured the collateral damage of the Goblin’s rampage far better than it showed the Goblin himself.  Steve searched for any flaw, any pattern or familiarity from the past in this new menace…    
Nothing really came to him.    
The Goblin’s glider didn’t look like it would hold up well against a blow from his shield, but there was something else to see here…  
The faces of a few fleeing bystanders in the lower right-hand side of the picture caught Steve’s eye.  They were  _terrified_.  
The Green Goblin was, (insanity aside) just one man with what amounted to a bag of grenades and a standard-issue SHIELD glider… wasn’t he?  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, upstairs bathroom, 8:40 PM.  
  
  
Tony shut the shower off, and stepped out dripping.  He toweled himself mostly dry, then wiped down the wrist-seal of the latex glove covering the front of his arc reactor carefully, and pulled it off with a snap.  Tony raised a hand to wipe the mirror so he could see to shave, and- -stopped.  
A smile spread quietly across his face.  
Tony moved his hand to the right, and wiped the condensation off a section of mirror that didn’t have Steve’s finger-traced palm tree sketched on it.  
  
-  
  
Downtown NYC, 10:48 PM.  
  
  
The wind was rising.  
Tony fired his bootjets and took off straight into it, tracking the signal from Peter’s Spider-comm. in his peripheral vision.  The kid could outrun a police cruiser when he really got swinging, and the next fire wasn’t far away.    
It was a multi-level nightclub, tall lines of sputtering neon wavering in the heat of the blaze within.  The lower levels of the building were already gone, a glowing inferno through the open front double doors facing onto the street.  The shaken crowd outside had had the sense to fall back more at that point, and they cowered like a gold and polyester rainbow on the far side of the hastily erected police barricades.  
 _  
“Zip lines!”_  Tony ordered without looking up, and landed as close to the doors as he could get without getting sucked in.    
  
Boots firmly on the ground and hand-repulsors braced magnetically against the structural steel of the building to withstand the indraft, Tony walked the rest of the way, and took hold of both door handles.  He yanked them shut with a sudden hard wrench, and flipped the polarity of his left hand-repulsor, holding the heavy metal security doors shut while he welded them together with the laser on his right-hand glove.  It was quick, and dirty, and effective.  With half its air cut off, the flames on the top floors slackened, but the respite wouldn’t last…    
  
A shadow in the smoky night sky above, Peter was swinging back and forth between the roof of the club and the roof of a high-rise across the street, bringing people across with him.  The fire department had one engine trained on the club itself, and another hosing the nearby buildings for the inevitable collapse.  Fat drops spattered and hissed across the hot metal of Tony’s faceplate as he drew back from the sealed double-doors.  The cops had taken charge of the two long, thickly-spun weblines Peter had left from the corners of the building to the ground.  The braver and more desperate of the trapped people above were wrapping their jackets or shirts around the line and sliding down the long curve to the ground that way.  The zip lines were a calculated risk, dangerous as hell to use with a mob of untrained civilians up there, but with the roof tar melting under them, there really hadn’t been any choice.  
  
Tony took to the air again, saw a girl fall off the nearer line, and stopped himself from catching her in a suit hot enough to peel off skin -just- in time.  Tony whipped a quick loop upwards, flew down through the cold stream of one of the fire hoses, and caught the girl with barely ten feet to spare.  He had, he judged, about three seconds before the reflexive fear-of-falling grip gave way to the ow-hot-metal letting go, but that was more than enough time to speed-brake and drop his charge off into the arms of a waiting fireman.  
  
The two looked at each other, momentarily stunned.  
The fireman because the girl was -very- pretty, and since she’d used her dress to protect her hands from the spider-web zip line, she was now in nothing but her underwear and one red high-heeled shoe…  
The girl because she was happy to still be  _alive_ , probably.  
  
It was a moment, one of hundreds Tony had seen through iron eyeslits over the years.  They were there- -and gone- -and if he could remember them at the right times later, it was moments like that that kept him from going mad.  
The entire thought took point two seconds and then Tony was gone again, airborne…  
  
  
Iron Man stood in the rain of an open fire hydrant, boots apart on the wet concrete, arms held slightly up away from his sides.  He tipped his face up, eyes shut, and let the water rinse the caked ash off his clear (now slightly warped)  Plexiglas eye shields.  There were muffled voices all around him, but for the moment all the fires were out, and the whirr of his suit’s internal cooling fans was the sweetest sound on Earth.  
Tony had the emergency/police band frequency crackling rapid-fire information in his right ear, and only smooth static in his left, the channel kept open for Peter.  
Information.  Water.  Rotatory-  
Wait… WHAT?  Why were they talking about his-?  
Tony’s eyes snapped open.  
 _  
“SPIDER,”_ he barked, keying his helmet radio.  
 _  
“Did you just hear what I-?!”_  Peter began, almost squelching out the channel.  
 _  
“Where are you?”_  Tony demanded, shortly.  
 _  
“The roof across the street,”_  Peter replied.  
 _  
“Stand by for pickup,”_  Tony ordered, and blasted up out of the hydrant-spray, shattering the water into a spreading nimbus lit from within.  
  
-  
  
Near the Iron Horse Garage, 12:07 AM (same night).  
  
  
The fire could be seen for miles.  It wasn’t big, but -damn- it was bright, cooking off white-hot in the center of a block the first explosion had plunged into darkness.  
 _White_ -hot… that had to be the magnesium alloy wheels stored in the broom closet upstairs, Tony thought, detaching Peter into a side-street two blocks out.  Peter cut his momentum by webbing off a lamppost, and vanished into shadow.  Then he was just a silent red dot, shifting up and down Tony’s right-side tracking indicator lights as he swung between buildings.  
Tony’s eyes focused forwards as he flew, actually squinting a little against the glare of the metal-fire, isolated in the darkness.  
He wasn’t alone up here.  
The ballsy son of a bitch had actually… stayed.  
  
Tony slammed into War Machine at a speed most light aircraft couldn’t match, fists-first.  
They plowed through the top quarter of a telephone pole without pausing, and dug a shallow, thirty-foot gouge in the asphalt of the street beyond before pulverizing the far curb.  
War Machine took the brunt of the impact, as Tony had meant for him to.  
The heavy, silver-gray armor was bigger than Tony’s, slower.  At eight and a half feet tall though, the War Machine was by far the smallest and best designed of the ‘knockoff’ suits.  Tony wasn’t sure -what- its power source was yet, but he was  _really_ looking forward to tearing it apart for a look-see…  
War Machine kneed him.  The impact came hard, striking the back plates of Tony’s armor with a tooth-jarring clang, and driving him forwards.  
Huge steel hands closed around Tony’s helmet, tightening with a deafening screech of grinding metal that drowned out the sound of both Tony’s radios…  then silenced them with a crunch and held him, pinned.  
Tony fired both hand-repulsors, aiming for the joints of War Machine’s otherwise thick shoulder-armor, and broke loose.  He hovered twelve feet up and rained down electromagnetic  _hell_ , burst after burst at close range, -hammering- the other suit apart with a ferocity that-  
-Shit-  
Tony darted out of line with War Machine’s chestplate just before the other suit’s unibeam fired.  It scorched the plating along the outside of his upper arm, hot enough to actually -feel-.  
Tony’s eyes narrowed.  
If he’d been wearing the Mark VIII, this would have been  _easy_.  Still…  
Turning and cutting power quickly, Tony dropped heel-first onto War Machine’s still-hot unibeam lens and fired his bootjet, using his hand repulsors to keep from actually taking off.  
As catalyzed as they were by the transistors that boosted them, Tony’s jets -were- still basically just air compressors, and point-blank they cooled instead of heated, plunging the temperature of the other suit’s unibeam’s focusing lens down fast.  It exploded in a hail of high-tempered glass and a small fountain of electrical sparks.    
War Machine grabbed Tony’s other ankle, and swung him against the cracked street to the side of them like a club, face first.  
  
“THAT’S ENOUGH!”  War Machine ordered.  
  
“Y- -you  _wish_ ,” Tony hissed, in the silence of his damaged helmet.  
  
He reversed his bootjets and his hand repulsors together, crashing back into his opponent in a surprise attack.  He hadn’t been set right for it though, so the move that should have ripped off the control cable Tony had spotted running below the right lower edge of War Machine’s helmet, bent the mount of War Machine’s heavy, shoulder-mounted gun instead.  Fine, thought Tony, I’ll take that…  
He grabbed the gun’s base, wrenched the weapon clean off at the swivel-point, and pistol-whipped War Machine in the faceplate with it, snapping his scratched gray helmet to the side with a noise like a wrecker’s hammer.  
  
  
War Machine did seem dazed for a second after that one, but Tony guessed that this was the pilot inside, not the armor itself.  It was the plans for the Mark II that had been stolen from him, and though Morgan’s engineers had clearly made some upgrades since, if they hadn’t found a way to lick the insulation problem, he could rattle this guy like a rat in a tin can… the analogy pleased him.  
War Machine’s helmet came up off the ground slowly, and- …the big gray suit’s weapon systems lost power.  All of them at once, leaving only the internal power-assist/articulation servos and life support systems up and running.  
It took Tony two full seconds to realize that he was looking at surrender.  
  
He reached up with his free hand, and touched a control just beneath the lower edge of his damaged red and gold helmet.    
Nothing happened.  
Tony rapped the knuckles of his gauntlet sharply against the side of his own faceplate, and tried the control again.  This time, the Plexiglas shields covering his eye and mouth-slits slid open with a misaligned squeak.  
The night air was cooler than Tony remembered, and wetter.  It cleared his head a little.  
  
“Who are you  _really_ working for?”  He demanded.  
  
“Captain America,” War Machine replied, coolly serious.  
  
“BULLSHIT!  You just burned down my HOUSE!”  Tony snarled, throwing the gun aside and charging his right hand repulsor in front of War Machine’s faceplate, “-and MORGAN doesn’t have the BALLS!  Now- -WHO?”  
  
“I didn’t set this fire, Iron Man.”  
  
“Oh, then you just liked watching it BURN?”  Tony asked, dangerously.  
  
“What would you have done?”  War Machine challenged, carefully.  
  
Tony opened his mouth, and- -stopped.  There -was- nothing he could do about a multicode chemical/metals fire once it got up to temperature, and if the Halon tanks under the stairs and a half-ton of atomized sodium chloride deploying hadn’t been enough when the fire first began, nothing short of the FDNY chemical unit or one of Susan’s air-forms  _would_ have been.  
Tony shut his mouth, and swallowed.  
The glow of the hand-repulsor facing War Machine dimmed, and Tony lowered it.  
  
“…You had better have a  _damned_  good reason for being here,” he stated, grimly.  
  
  
“-He does,” said a calm, serious voice that didn’t seem to belong in a living nightmare.  
  
War Machine looked up past Tony’s elbow at the speaker, silent.  
Tony turned, slowly.  
Steve was walking up to them, now less than fifteen feet away.  There were a few gray-black smears on the brightly-colored mail and leather of his costume, and one longer, darker ash-mark across the face of his shield, but…  
  
“Cap, what… what  _was_ War Machine doing here?”  Tony asked, numbly.  
  
“He was waiting for me, Iron Man.  I ordered him back here after we lost the Green Goblin,” Steve explained.  
  
“…The Green Goblin did this?”  Tony asked, carefully.  
  
“Yes,” Steve put a hand on the hard red curve of Tony’s shoulder-armor, “-there were witnesses.”  
  
“-Oh.”  
  
Tony looked back down at War Machine.  
War Machine met him eyeslit to eyeslit, using a slight power-up of the red indicator lights within his helmet to create the impression of a glare.  
  
“Nothing personal,” Tony told him, flatly.  
  
“That’s a great comfort,” the deep, distorted voice assured him coldly, “-now get the hell off me.”  
  
Tony took a deep, unsteady breath, and felt the slight weight of Steve’s hand on his shoulder.  Then he stood, and moved back out of War Machine’s way.  
The battered silver-gray suit sat up with a deep whine of protesting servos, and heaved itself up out of the concrete and asphalt crater.  War Machine stood up fully, sending a slight tremor through the ground at their feet, and rising to more than two feet above the other two.  A slight rattle of broken cement and gravel landed around War Machine’s blocky gray boots, knocked loose from the chinks of his armor by the motion.  
War Machine reached up, and touched the dark, broken face of the beam-projector in the center of his chestplate with his thickly armored fingers, exploring the damage.  
He looked down at Tony thoughtfully for a slightly too-long pause, then turned to Steve.  
  
“Captain, I’ll need to get this repaired soon.  Do you have any further orders for me?”  
  
“No, War Machine.  Are you still flight-capable?”  Steve asked, looking up at his huge, heavily-armored teammate with no fear whatsoever.  
The reflected lights behind War Machine’s eyeslits shifted momentarily.  
  
“I believe so,” he decided, nodding his helmet a little.  
  
“Go ahead then,” Steve agreed, “-debriefing is at ten-hundred tomorrow at the tower unless I call you.”  
  
“Acknowledged.”  
  
War Machine collected his fallen gun from the pavement, and took off.  
He had three jets on each boot, Tony noticed.  It made sense at that weight, but… interesting.  How had they compensated for the-  
  
“Iron Man,” Steve cut across his thoughts.  
  
“Hm?  Um… yes?”  Tony blinked, focusing.  
  
“I need you to get Spider-Man and your mechanic safely to Avengers tower, and then disappear.  Can you do that?”  
  
“My-” Tony caught himself, “-yeah I can do that.  Tony keeps some spare tools and cables in storage there anyway.”  
  
“Good.  See if he can do something about those radios of yours,” Steve said, touching one of the crushed red disks on Tony’s helmet.  
  
“-What about you?”  Tony wanted to know.  
  
“I’ll call Spider-man if I need you,” Steve promised, “-I think it was him the Green Goblin was after when he came here anyway.”  
  
“…I know,” Tony admitted, with a sigh.  
  
-  
  
Avengers Tower living quarters, 2:48 AM (same night).  
  
  
Steve froze with his key almost to the lock of his door, listening.    
Small metallic clicks.  The soft creak of a chair as the person sitting leaned forwards.  A muttered curse.  Something hard and plastic being set down on a wooden desk.  …More clicks.  
Steve relaxed, unlocked the door, and went in.  
Tony looked up sharply from the scattered fruit salad of wires and gleaming helmet parts laid out in front of him- -then resumed breathing.  
  
“Steve… hey, what took you so long?”  Tony smiled, coming over.  
  
“What do you mean?”  Steve asked, hugging him.  
  
“You entered the building over half an hour ago,” Tony told him, eyes shut.  
  
“…How do you know that?”  Steve asked, drawing back a little.  
  
“I- -set up a few things…”  Tony shrugged vaguely, “-just… damn it’s good to see you.”  
  
“-You too,” Steve agreed, bringing him back in close.  Tony’s gray t-shirt smelled of long storage and light machine oil, but the skin beneath it smelled -right-, like dried sweat, high-tech foam rubber, and… lemons.  …Well, that was the armor, but-  
  
“Tony,” Steve said, clearly.  
  
“Hm-?”  
  
“How’s Peter?”  
  
“Horrified at the revelation that I faked missing a decimal point in order to hire him, but otherwise just fine.”  Tony replied, with a slight smirk.  
  
“Tony… we didn’t lose  _anybody_ -!”  Steve beamed, and leaned back against the door with Tony in his arms, shutting it harder than he’d meant to.  
  
They both jumped a little, and Steve started to laugh, and Tony took a step in, pinning Steve against the door, and kissed him.  
Another kiss followed it, and another.  Tony felt his face and neck flushing warmly, and he couldn’t catch his breath, and he didn’t care-  
Fingers running up through the short, dark hair at the nape of his neck and not quite closing- -a hand under the back of his shirt, migrating without hurry, kneading gently but deeply, strength held back like the glow of a hot-  like the fire-  
No, FUCK that, he was  _alive_ , and Steve was a solid lodestone in front of him, and he could _take_  this because nobody was-  
  
“Steve-” Tony began, unarmored fingers closing with a soft metallic crunch around a thick handful of scale mail across Steve’s shoulder blade, “…please.”  
  
He didn’t usually use the word without provocation, but tonight it seemed to fit.  
Steve kissed him again, a brief, firm promise.  Clothes and costume went.  
Steve’s shield ended up hanging over the arm of a chair.  
Tony was glad his armor was already in the hockey bag under the bed.  -On- the bed was much more fun, and they went down  _hard_ , legs tangling.  
Tony was a unique texture, at least in Steve’s experience.  Soft skin over firm muscle, sweat-slick, with a tantalizing scrape of dark body hair trapped in between, everywhere but nowhere thickly, until it-  
Tony was beneath him now, dick rising smooth and hard along Steve’s own, too goddamned  _much_  against that texture…  Fingers gripping Steve’s shoulder, and Tony’s hand palming both of them in a loose circle, which would have been even better with-  
  
“Hang on.  T- top drawer-” Steve managed, “-I’ll get it…”    
  
“You have- -hah- -this is open…”  Tony grinned.  
  
“-Experiment,”  Steve said with a blush, and caught his breath with a gasp as he felt Tony’s hand on him again, and saw the beads of cool, clear gel squeezing out through the other man’s fingers as they tightened  _just_ enough-  
  
“-Nh- - _Tony_ …!”  Steve grabbed Tony’s upper arm.    
  
“Come back here- -you’re wet- -share-…”  Tony let go of Steve’s dick and took hold of his wrist, fingers sliding without traction against the blonde’s skin, pulling him -down-, until they were aligned again, slick and hard, and powerful in a way that wouldn’t wait, and didn’t have to.    
  
Being inside Tony was  _different_ , a deep, all-consuming thunder that left his thoughts slow, and strange, and primal…  
This- -this was wildfire.  This was arching, striking, quick.  This was each man taking his pleasure in the other, and  _trying_  to hold it together, and getting it -just- right, and slick fingers digging into Steve’s back, and Tony’s hips bucking and arching beneath his without waiting for a perfect rhythm, and breath that hissed through tight-clenched teeth, and a rising, gasping whimper of warning that couldn’t possibly be coming from  _him_ …   
And then he was coming, hard and hot against Tony’s stomach, pressing down closer and sliding his dick forcefully against Tony’s in a broken rhythm he soon lost- -and Tony picked up.  
Tony swore, and pressed his open mouth against Steve’s shoulder without -quite- biting down.  His eyes shut tight, and he used Steve’s weight above him as a personal fulcrum, a stop-plate, a limiter that allowed _him_ to let go, and thrust up knowing he would be driven back  _down_  just as hard until-  
  
“Ohhh…!”  
 _  
Christ…_  
A perfect fusion, a rising pressure-wave of liquid heat that swept through Tony’s body and -owned- him, and Steve held him down  _just_ where he wanted to be, until they were both spent, pooling together, breathing hard in the quiet of this new and unfamiliar room, that didn’t handle the soft echoes quite right.  
  
“Well-” Tony began, when he could talk at all, “-I- -feel better- …you?”  
  
“Hmmmmmn…”   Steve buried his face in the dark curls just above Tony’s ear, and inhaled deeply, smiling, “- _yeah_ …”  
  
-  
  
Avengers Tower kitchen, 9:55 (following morning).  
  
  
Tony squinted against the too-bright kitchen lights overhead.  It was a modern room, with a long white sweep of contoured cabinets, a steel-topped kitchen island, and an espresso machine.  Jan had gotten tired of the 1960’s primary colors thing, apparently…  
  
 “Good morning, Tony,” Peter said brightly, from his perch atop a counter to Tony’s left.  He was in full costume, aside from having the bottom half of his mask pulled up.  
  
“Mm.  Hey, Spider…”  Tony muttered, and- -paused, frowning.  “-Since when do you put your boots on the counter, and how many cups of that coffee have you had?”  
  
“Three?”  Peter guessed, “-I mean, this would be my third one.  The coffee’s really good here, you should try it.”  
  
“OFF,” Tony ordered, pointing towards the floor, “-and  _please_  tell me you’ve been drinking the regular stuff…”  
  
“Oh yeah, are you kidding me?”  Peter hopped down,  “-but the espresso did smell really good earlier, and Wanda put all kinds of stuff in hers, like cream and caramel, and hazelnut syrup, which I think is a European thing, but since-”  
  
“Have… have you even eaten yet?”  Tony interrupted, rubbing his face with one hand.  
  
“Uh-huh.  I ate with Steve and Carol before they left for the Secret Squirrel meeting earlier,” Peter nodded.  
  
“Okay… that’s good,” Tony sighed.  He poured a cup of coffee for himself, and leaned back against the counter.  “So,” Tony began, nodding towards the muted television on the counter across from them, “-what else got hit?”  
  
“Just the ones you already know about.  Oh, and a museum, if you haven’t talked to Wanda and Pietro yet.  That was taking place across town while we were busy with the disco fire.”  
  
  
“Mm,” Tony drank his coffee, and frowned at the images on the news.    
  
He’d been on television from time to time as Iron Man- -he was now, in fact- -but he hadn’t seen the name ‘Tony Stark’ shown on in bold white news capitals for over half a decade and he found the experience deeply unsettling.  
For one thing, a thorough airing of the Stark family’s laundry would run the risk of taking the focus  _off_ the Green Goblin’s arson spree.  Best case scenario if that happened, the bastard would get clean away, and at worst the Goblin might decide to do something  _else_ to get attention.  
Another problem was that if his life as Tony Stark was examined in detail, the names ‘Peter Parker’ and ‘Steve Rogers’ would come up very quickly.  
  
As Tony’s only known employee and Iron Man’s regular in-costume partner, Peter was already doubly vulnerable, but with the Green Goblin (apparently) targeting Spider-man…  What if a reporter decided to do a human-interest piece, and mentioned Aunt May or Mary Jane by name?   
What if some busy little muck-raking weasel dug up the fact that Peter was roommates with Norman Osborne’s  _son_ _?_  
And what if the Green Goblin sat down in his own Halloween-themed kitchen with five bucks worth of New York City newspapers, and put all this  _together?_  
It was far from impossible.  
  
Steve could at least handle himself, and Tony trusted that whatever paper trail the DOD had set out behind him would hold water like the Hoover  _Dam_ , but…    
Steve liked being ordinary.    
He liked drawing things with his finger on the bathroom mirror, and going down the street for a carton of milk, and really getting to  _know_ the people who lived in the neighborhood, and was even cautiously warming up to the idea of living in a future where it was _legal_  for men to be ‘roommates’…  
And what a perfect kick in the nuts it would be, if some over-eager reporter drove Steve back into sneaking down skylights in full costume.  
…I’ll think of  _something_ , Tony promised himself.  
  
  
Peter watched the images on the silent television screen change, saw the night before, and himself swinging from building to building, a thin fragment of flitting black silhouetted against the solid red-orange block of flames…  
He saw smoke in the garment district, and the soggy, charred backdrop of a museum lobby… though that  _had_  been the worst of the damage, in that particular fire…  
He saw a tall corner apartment building that lit the streets on both sides of it in crawling tangerine-yellow, and painted the upturned faces of the grim firemen.  
And then he saw something that looked more like the surface of the moon, a daytime image…  An irregular pile of pale gravel and ash, melted in places, surrounded on two and a half sides by a fragile-looking cinderblock shell.  
  
“…-Damn-,” Tony swore, quietly.  
  
“Steve said it reminded him of Dresden,” Peter commented.  
  
“It should,” Tony sighed.   _God he needed a drink-_  “-Spider?”  
  
“Yes?”  Peter looked over at him.  
  
“Things could get really ugly for a while-” Tony began.  
  
“I- I- yeah, I got that part, holy  _crap_ …”  Peter’s voice rose.  
  
“-No,  _listen_ ,” Tony insisted, “-the Goblin’s dangerous and he’s crazy, but he’s not stupid.  He went after four soft targets to spread us out, then he hit my place with enough high-temperature incendiary bombs to level this  _tower_.  Most civilians don’t have access to things like that in the first place, let alone the knowledge of how and why to use them on a building that was seventy-five percent concrete and steel.  That tells us we’re dealing with a professional, or a scientist.  The Green Goblin also still  _appears_  to still be working alone, which means that if we can get enough fliers into the air fast enough, we can run him down with dogfighting tactics.  That should be done soon, because this guy _loves_ causing collateral.”  
  
“What can I do then?”  Peter protested, “-I can’t fly…”  
  
“You can sling your webs almost as fast as the Falcon can fly, but what would be  _really_ useful is if you can get a spider-tracer onto him,” Tony explained, “-however…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“This is a villain you’re going to have to learn to share,” Tony said, putting a hand on Peter’s shoulder.  
  
“…That just means you’re hoping Steve can come up with a better plan than using me for  _bait_ , doesn’t it?”  Peter guessed, carefully.  
  
“Yes Spider, it does,” Tony told him.  
  
“I feel so loved- -Ooo, hey, the part about War Machine is on!”  Peter pointed.  
  
“Turn it up.”  
  
  
 _“-EO of Stark Industries had no comment on the incident, which did an unconfirmed eighty five thousand dollars in damage to the Stark Industries War Machine armor.  According to Avengers sponsor and spokeswoman Janet Van Dyne, the fight occurred as the result of a misunderstanding between the two powersuit pilots, and that since neither pilot was actually injured, the incident is being handled in-house.  Witnesses say that both suits were visibly damaged by the time Captain America arrived and broke up the fight, though Iron Man has been unavailable for comment since leaving the scene. The question of exactly what these pilots could have said to each other to -cause- this fight remains unanswered…”_  
  
The camera cut to another reporter interviewing a uniformed cop on the street.  
 _“What does one eight hundred pound gorilla say to another?  How tha heck should I know?”_  
  
Cut to a pair of longhaired college students.  
 _“It’s not always about the superheroes, you dig?  There used to be some guy’s small business over there yesterday and today it’s like… a smoking hole.”_  
 _“Yeah,”_ the other student agreed.  
 _“-And you’re in my face with that microphone, asking me what the guys in armored suits fought about afterwards… that- -that’s the real story here, lady.  That’s messed up.”_  
  
Cut to a young woman in a knitted green hat. _  
“They’re a danger to society.  I mean… look at this-”_  (camera pan over the broken section of street and downed telephone pole)  _“-get ‘em both off the streets.”_  
  
Cut to a grade-schooler in a ‘Yankees’ jacket. _  
“Maybe somethin’ about his mom…?”_  
  
Cut to a middle-aged man in workman’s overalls. _  
“Wha’d he say?”_ The man repeated, smirking,  _“-wrong f-BLEEP- thing, apparently.”_  
  
And with that, the news went to a toothpaste commercial.  
  
“I love this city,” Tony decided, grinning.  
  
“It has its moments,” Peter agreed, and finished his coffee.  
  
-  
  
Harry and Peter’s apartment, 2:18 PM (same day).  
  
  
Peter’s soft-soled boots scraped lightly on the balcony above his own, and he dropped down.  
Harry, slumped in the leather chair by the right hand set of glass double doors, looked up over his shoulder quickly, as if startled.  
He had the balcony door open before Peter reached it.  
  
“Peter, thank god you’re safe,” Harry said, and engulfed him in a hug.   
  
Peter hugged his friend back, hesitantly.  So many things had happened in the past eighteen hours, he’d almost forgotten that Harry -knew- he was Spider-man, and he certainly hadn’t expected… what  _was_ this?  
  
“-Hi,” Peter said, partially muffled by his mask against Harry’s shoulder.  
  
Harry let him go, and looked at him searchingly.  
  
“You are okay, right?”  
  
“Yeah…”  
  
“I saw your boss’s place on the news after you called me last night,” Harry stated, letting Peter the rest of the way into the apartment.  
  
“Yeah, it’s… looked better.”  Peter agreed, shutting the door and pulling off his mask.  
  
-It felt more natural to talk to Harry face to face, somehow.  
  
“Both Aunt May and MJ called me this morning,” Harry continued, running a hand through his hair distractedly, “-I told them you and Tony were staying with some friends of Steve’s and that I didn’t have the number…”  
  
“That’s good,” Peter nodded.    
  
“-I mean what else was I going to tell her, that all three of you were staying with the Avengers because you’re  _Spider-Man_ , and your boss secretly builds high-tech superhero weapons?  That, ah-”  
  
“Harry… did you sleep at all last night?”  Peter asked, studying his friend’s shadowed, somewhat waxy-looking face.  
  
“Why?”  Harry demanded, too quickly.  
  
“Well… you look kind of rough.  Are _you_ okay?”  
  
“…I’m sorry-” Harry began vaguely, and rubbed his face with his hands.  
  
“What do you mean?”  Peter asked.  
  
“Peter, I just- -I’ve never…”  
  
“…Seen what a villain can do when it’s personal?”  Peter guessed, quietly.  
  
“YES,” Harry said, vehemently.  
  
“I tried to keep you out of it, but… you’re kind of a hero yourself,” Peter shrugged, uncomfortably.  
  
“I…”  Harry looked up, his eyes clearer, “-yeah, I guess I am,” he smiled, wryly.  
  
“I need a shower,” said Peter.  
  
“-Yeah, I do too,” Harry reflected, “-uh… you go first.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
-  
  
Avenger’s Tower basement, 4:40 PM (same day).  
  
  
Tony paused outside the locked laboratory door, and glanced up at the security camera in the corner.  He shifted his feet a little, and resisted the temptation to see if his access code still worked.  
Instead he took a breath, and knocked.  
  
“…What do you want?”  Hank Pym replied through the intercom on the wall, after an unusually long pause.  
  
“A set of clean coveralls, one latex exam glove sized large or medium, and a soldering kit,” Tony replied, brisk and professional.  
  
“Where did you sleep last night?”  Hank asked, disgustedly.  
  
Tony shut his eyes momentarily, and resisted the urge to grit his teeth.  
  
“Don’t do this, Pym.”  
  
“-Of course I could just pull the security footage…”  Hank continued.  
  
“Do it and I’ll tell on you,” Tony promised.  
  
“Come on, let’s have it, who are you going after now?”  
  
“Sorry, I don’t kiss and tell.  Can I have my supplies now?”  
  
“What the hell do you urgently need a single latex exam glove for before dinner?  …Or do I want to know?”  
  
“Sorry, armor secret,” Tony replied, flatly.  
  
“What are you doing here, Stark?  Why aren’t you with your friends?  …Why are you in _my_  house?”  Hank pressed.  
  
“You have a house, Pym,” Tony said coldly, “-this is just Jannie’s dollhouse.”  
  
  
“That’s not an answer,” Hank purred, with the security of a man inside his castle walls.  
  
“I’m here because I’ve been seeing one of the Avengers for over a year now.  If you haven’t noticed which one, maybe you should pay more attention.”  
  
An ant crawled onto the back of Tony’s hand from the bottom edge of his t-shirt.  Tony brushed it off onto the floor impatiently.  Two more ants stood milling around on the door lock control box, and a thin trail began to march down through an unseen chink in the ceiling tiles in one corner.   
  
“Knock it _off_ , Pym,” Tony growled.  
  
“Scared?”  Hank asked.  
  
Tony felt something tiny crawling in the part of his hair, and decided to ignore it for the moment.  
  
“Of course not.  You’d never be able to get the carpet replaced in here fast enough.”  
  
“Very true,” Hank agreed.  
  
A wasp crawled under the lab door, took to the air, and began inspecting Tony distrustfully in a series of short looping curves.  
  
“…You’re kidding me, right?”  Tony said, standing still for the insect’s examination.   
  
“Get out of my house, Stark.”  
  
“Equipment -first-,” Tony insisted, swallowing quietly and wondering if he could brush off whatever was walking across the side of his neck without getting stung.  
  
Hank let him sweat for a minute or so more, then opened the door and handed Tony a roll of white cloth, a small toolbox, and the glove he’d asked for.  
  
“Try not to step on anyone as you leave,” Hank advised pleasantly, “-they get very upset if they think you’re threatening their queen.”  
  
“I’m not after anyone’s queen,” Tony promised, meeting Hank’s gaze levelly.  
  
“Not anymore, no,” Hank agreed with a hard look, and shut the door again.  
  
The wasp- - _wasps_ , there were two of them now, buzzed sharply and dive-bombed Tony’s face.  
Tony shut his eyes and felt the light, smooth bodies ricochet softly off his right cheek and fly off.  
Tony sighed through his nose, then opened his eyes deliberately and picked out a path across the gently rippling carpet towards the outside door with care.  
He made it, and escaped out into the hallway beyond, shedding insects as he went.  
Janet was out of her goddamn  _mind_ …  
  
-  
  
Avengers Tower living quarters, Cap’s room, 5:02 PM (same day).  
  
  
The last drop of molten solder set into place around its copper and steel connection, and Tony studied the leftovers on his- -Steve’s desk by the hiss of the dead channel.  He’d been able to re-bend the radio-cup earpieces back into shape with his transistor-powered gauntlets, just a reverse of how he autographed aluminum baseball bats and sections of steel pipe by squeezing, really…  
The radio parts -inside- were another story, and it had only been by canning pieces from both shattered radios that he’d gotten the right-hand one working again.  The left would have to wait until he could get to a radio shack or a pawn shop or something.  
But, Tony thought screwing the left cover back on, his enemies didn’t have to know about that.  
He could have taken apart the radio in the kitchen or the common room and fixed both helmet-radios, but even before dealing with Hank Pym, he hadn’t quite been willing to go there.  Yes the Avengers had resources, but tapping into them came with a price that had nothing to do with money, a price in acknowledged weaknesses, and… memories.  
This tower really wasn’t Hank’s, it was -Jan’s-.  
  
Tony had known her the longest of any of them, growing up in the same Manhattan jet-set.  Jan always been there, flitting in and out of Tony’s life in dresses that had made him think as much as stare.  Her first costume with wings had actually been a fairy princess themed tea dress, all sheer pastel-blue gauze and too much glitter.  He remembered it because the wire frames of the translucent wings had been bent in a clever double loop with a back-twist that had somehow made the whole classic design look original.  
Tony had lost track of her several times, because she was just a -girl- after all, and they’d never been dating…  
He’d been  _stunned_  by her after returning early from MIT to take over Stark Industries, but they hadn’t happened then either, because even as a debutante, Jan had had more sense.  
  
  
And then Bain… and Morgan… and Vietnam had happened.  
By the time Tony returned the states with a medical discharge approved by an Army doctor he’d known in prep school, the eight-spoked wheel of the arc reactor glowing beneath the buttons of his uniform jacket, and the plans to the destroyed Mark I armor rolled up in the battery compartment of a flashlight in the duffel bag over his shoulder, things had changed.  
The states hadn’t really  _wanted_  him back for a start, but that had been a detail.  
  
The hollow beat of helicopter blades against months of dust and rain… the wise, silken discipline of Soong Sun-Mai… and finally a sweltering workshop in the jungle and the face of a good, dying man… these things had remade Tony Stark forever.  
He’d come back with a mission, a purpose greater than bettering himself for the first time in his short life, and he’d still been arrogant enough to think that no one could have been re-forged as completely without leaving New York City.  
  
Tony had been wrong.  
Janet Van Dyne, the fairy princess in the blue tea dress, had become a superheroine.  She had her own organic wings the color of clean oil spreading across a pond, detailed in thin gray veins.  She had delicate black antennae, and a tall blonde linebacker of a boyfriend who thought the world of her and could actually -get- small enough to fool around at the size at which her insect wings emerged.  
He was also perfectly willing to inject his girlfriend’s back and forehead with untested biochemically reactive cells from an entirely different  _phylum_  to get out of building her an insect-control helmet of her own, and sharing the power to command that secret, six-legged world.  
Hank didn’t share well period, in Tony’s experience…  
But he’d gotten along with Hank for Jan’s sake, and the biochemist’s genius had been clearly worthy of Tony’s respect.  
  
  
Then… Jan had inherited six  _million_ dollars, and finally been able to pursue a few pet projects of hers, like launching the Van Dyne fashion label, and sponsoring New York’s first official and completely unrelated superhero team.  It had been a hell of an undertaking, and Hank had quietly and sullenly began to fade from a moody and ineffective team captain to just one name on the Avengers growing team roster to… just Jan’s.  
He hadn’t handled it well, and Jan had jilted him.  
At the time, Tony had been wiring the tower’s security system, and it had been good to talk to Jan without a lab-coated shadow…    
Then she had needed an ‘and guest’ for some high society function, and asked Tony if he felt like causing a scandal for old times’ sake…  
And she’d smiled.  
Tony had put his electric screwdriver down, and gone with her.  
It had been candidly physical from the start, and it had lasted for all of about two months.  
Jan  _still_  had no idea that Tony was anything other than an unusually gifted inventor and Iron Man’s one-man pit crew…  
  
It had been _fun_  though, and Tony had gotten to dance with her.  One of the finest, classiest, most beautiful women he’d ever met, and the  _only_  one who loved flying as much as he did.  
…And he’d had the sense to let her go when Hank had gotten his act together and come back, because while Tony might have been able to take on Hank, there had been no arguing with the wordless apology in Jan’s lovely blue eyes.  
There were other women out there for Tony.  And men.  
But for Hank Pym there was only Janet Van Dyne.  His gossamer-winged goddess.  The only woman for whom he could submerge his ego, even temporarily.  The love of Hank’s life, and in a way his greatest -thankfully most flawless- experiment.  
Tony’s high-flying fairy princess was Hank’s Queen, and being cherished that completely  _had_  to be a rush or a woman as sharp as Jan wouldn’t still be  _with_  him…  
But the royalty of the insect world no longer flew, and as of two years ago, neither did Ant-Man or the Wasp.  
That wasn’t a nest Tony felt like disturbing for the sake of a broken radio.  
  
  
Tony picked up the gleaming bead of a cracked capacitor from the handful of parts left on the desk and studied it, frowning thoughtfully.  
He heard a knock.  
Tony glanced over at the door quickly, then back at the small TV at his elbow, split between four grainy black and white security camera images.  
Wanda.  
Tony got the door and stood there with a wry, friendly smile.  
  
“Hello, Tony.  Cap told me you were staying with him, so…”  Wanda hesitated, tactfully.  
  
“It’s all right,” Tony nodded easily, “-I’m fixing Iron Man’s armor in here, not hiding.  What’s up?”  
  
“Okay, ah… I brought your record back,” she said.  
  
“What?”  Tony blinked.  
  
“ _‘Under the Boardwalk’_  by the  _Drifters_.  Peter borrowed it for me last week, remember?”  
  
“-Oh yeah.”  
  
“Here you go,” Wanda smiled warmly, and handed the record to him in its cardboard sleeve.  
  
“Thank you,” Tony said, and meant it.  
  
“You’re welcome, Tony.”  
  
“…You like  _The Drifters_?”  Tony asked, taking the record half out of its sleeve and looking at it.  
  
“Carol does, actually…”  Wanda told him, lightly.  
  
Their eyes met over the record cover, and the ends of Tony’s mustache quirked upwards.   
  
“I called that,” he smirked.  
  
“Cap  _told_  you?”  Wanda demanded, momentarily taken aback.  
  
“-Told me  _what?_ ”  Tony asked, with increasing fascination.  
  
“I have to go,” Wanda giggled.  
  
“Yeah, I bet.  Thanks again for bringing this back, Wanda,” Tony smiled.  
  
“See you later, Tony.”  
  
She turned, and Tony shut the door.  
He returned to the desk, and decided to make a pendant for Wanda out of two of the prettier leftover radio parts and as much of Hank’s silver-based electrical solder as he possibly could without sacrificing good taste.  
Tony was about fifteen minutes into this new project when his helmet radio crackled.  
 _  
“-crkkkk-Power Man to Iron Man, come in?  You get yo radio fixed yet or wha-kcrrc…?”_  
  
Tony stated at his helmet for a split-second, immobile.  Then he seized it and put it on, keying the mic.  
 _  
“Iron Man here.  What’s up, Powers?”_  
 _  
“SWEET CHRISTMAS SHELLHEAD, WHERE IN THA HECK HAVE YOU BEEN?!”_ Luke demanded, loud enough that the sound distorted in Tony’s earphones.    
 _  
“Laying low until my armor was fixed, jeez.  …I take it you missed me?”_  
 _  
“You sneakin’, jivin’, lowlife sonofa-”_  Luke began.  
 _  
“-That’s a yes,”_ Tony decided.  
  
  
—  
  
All known or referenced songs on Tony’s jukebox at the time of its destruction:  
  
F-11    Immigrant Song            Led Zeppelin  
?          Iron Man                          Black Sabbath  
?          Paranoid                         Black Sabbath  
?          My Way                            Frank Sinatra  
G-12   The End                          The Doors  
B-3      Rock a Hula Baby         Elvis   
D-1      Lynden Johnson Told the Nation    Tom Paxton  
F-2       The Battle of Evermore        Led Zeppelin  
?          Born to be Wild            Steppenwolf  
C-12   (dunno, but you can dance to it)    ?  
?          Up on the Roof            The Drifters  
C-4      Mr. Tambourine Man       Bob Dylan  
?          What’s Going On            Marvin Gaye  
?          My Boy                              Elvis  
?          Break on Through          The Doors  
?         Ruby Tuesday                The Rolling Stones  
?         I Walk the Line               Johnny Cash  
?         All Along the Watchtower   Jimmy Hendrix  
?         Rock Around the Clock     Bill Haley and His Comets  
D-9     Rocket Man                        Elton John  
C-11   Wichita Lineman            Glenn Campbell  
?         Leader of the Pack         The Shangri-la’s  
?         School’s Out                      Alice Cooper  
A-10   Ziggy Stardust                      David Bowie  
?         Under the Boardwalk            The Drifters   
  
Also used:  
  
Radio    White Room                Cream

-


	6. Chapter 6

-

The Warehouse District, NYC, 9:02 AM.  
  
  
Steve ducked his head under the shadow of a broken, blackened beam, and stood.  The gutted warehouse was silent yet not, the whole unsafe structure still settling with faint crunches and whispery groans.  Some sections of the roof had burned and fallen in entirely, others were bare grates of unbroken beams with the cold morning sky showing through them.  
Steve gave the fragile roof an appraising glance as he walked into the roofless space in the center, red boots crunching on drifts of cinders.  
  
“Over here, Cap,” a grizzled fireman signaled him, pointing to a half-buried strip of corrugated steel on the ground.  
  
“Good morning, Lt. Farrell.  What have you got?”  Steve asked.  
  
“See for yourself,” the fireman replied, and levered the thin steel sheeting aside with a crowbar.  
  
It was scorched, warped in places and disjointed from what looked like something in the center blowing up and burning, but what the thing -had- been was chillingly clear.  Hover-pads on the exposed underside, manta-wing silhouette exaggerated with wickedly sharp fairings along the leading edge…  
And since this warehouse fire had taken place on the day  _before_  the Green Goblin’s firebombing spree, it left another question.  
  
“…How many more have you found?”  Steve asked, straightening.  
  
“Two more of the Goblin’s gliders, and… part of a machine we don’t understand at all.  We’re also standing on a  _carpet_  of blown munitions, and there were a couple of live pumpkin-bombs up in that southeast corner that the bomb squad took care of early this morning.  -I’d have called you earlier, but until the bomb squad cleared the building my boys couldn’t get in, and… well, Cap, we’ve been busy.”  
  
“I know.”  Steve put a red-gloved hand on the fireman’s shoulder.  
  
“So…”  Lt. Farrell took out a cigarette and lit it with a match, “-who do you think burned out the Green Goblin?”  
  
“I’m going to find out,” Steve promised, frowning down at the charred glider again.  
  
“Anybody you wanna bring in for a look at this stuff?  -Before- we call in the shmucks that lost it in the first place, I mean?”  Lt. Farrell asked.  
  
“Actually, there is…”  Steve began.  
  
-  
  
The Warehouse District, NYC, 9:31 AM (same day).  
  
  
“-Exhaust system’s different…”  Tony muttered, brushing ash off the second Goblin glider with his fingers, “-the other one would’ve been faster, but it probably turned like a seven-forty-seven…”  
  
“Are you saying these were prototypes, or just modified?”  Lt. Farrell asked, crouching in the piled cinders with him.  
  
“Who tha  _hell_ let a civilian into my crime scene?”  Nick Fury demanded, before Tony could answer.  
  
Lt. Farrell swore softly under his breath.  
Steve glanced up at Fury, folded his arms across his chest, and looked vaguely guilty.  
Tony stood, dusting off his hands, and regarded the approaching director of SHIELD with no favor.  
  
“Tony Stark.  I shoulda known,” Fury growled, glancing venomously between Steve and Lt. Farrell.  
  
“You have a rat problem,” Tony interrupted him, pointing down at the glider significantly.  
  
“Ya think I don’t know that?  Now get out,” Fury ordered, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the doorway.  “-It ain’t like I don’t have -your- prints and boots on file…”  
  
“Fine,” Tony said curtly, making a hands-off gesture, “-I’m gone.”  His glance shifted to Steve and he added, “-I’ll be right outside.”  
  
“Right,” Steve agreed, and looked back at Colonel Fury.  
  
Tony left.  
  
“DID it-” Fury snarled, fists on his hips, “-at any point occur ta you two  _cowboys_  that I might be smack in tha middle of a delicate internal investigation here?  Tha kind that’s set back six months or MORE if some yahoo drops a line to the press about it?”  
  
Both Steve and Lt. Farrell had been familiar with rank structures long enough to know a rhetorical question when they heard one.  
  
“Cap-” Fury continued, stabbing Steve in the chest with a finger, “-if that goddamn hippie breathes a word of what he saw here today, I’m holding you personally responsible.  Lt. Farrell, if forensics tells me any o’ this evidence is fucked up now, your ass is in a  _sling_ , do I make myself clear?”  
  
“Yes, sir,” said Lt. Farrell.  
  
“Whadda you think, Cap?”  Fury challenged, “-or do you gotta go talk it over with somebody -first-?”  
  
“Sir, may I speak with you in private?”  Steve asked, as professionally as he could.  
  
“Ya know what?  I -like- that idea.  C’mere, let’s you and me go have a little ‘chat’…”  Fury growled.  
  
-  
  
Outside the burned building in the warehouse district, NYC, 9:45 AM (same day).  
  
  
Tony gave Lt. Farrell the rest of his thoughts on the two Goblin Gliders and the wrecked vapor-atomization chamber outside, and… waited.  He sat on one of the fire truck’s highly-polished steel running boards in jeans and a green, open-collared shirt he’d borrowed from Danny Rand that morning and felt decidedly… -naked-.  
Unarmored.  
  
“Hey- you’re Tony, right?”  One of the younger firemen asked, pausing next to him.  
  
“That’s me,” Tony agreed, casually.  
  
“Thanks for leavin’ that note with Sergeant Gillespie about not sendin’ his guys into your place if it ever caught fire.  -It woulda been my Cousin Louie’s turn to kick in the door the other night.”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tony smirked, “-but I’m glad no one got hurt.”  
  
“Heh.  Right, right…” the young fireman grinned, clapping him on the shoulder, “-I’ll see you around, man.”    
  
“You too-” Tony glanced at the young man’s name tag, “-O’Conner.”  
  
O’Conner climbed up past him onto the truck.  
Tony spotted a bright flicker of red white and blue coming out of the warehouse.  
Steve’s back looked stiff, and he was holding his shield an inch or two up and closer to his body than he usually did.  Tony frowned mentally and slid down off the fire truck, meeting him halfway.  
  
“So… how did it go?”  Tony asked.  
  
“Colonel Fury can be a very… difficult man sometimes,” Steve sighed.  
  
“Are we done here?”  
  
“Yes,” Steve nodded, glancing back at the warehouse uncomfortably.  
  
-  
  
The Docks, NYC, 1:37 AM.   
  
  
It was hard to say who was more startled, Luke or the criminals he’d walked in on.  
They were looting- -or possibly exchanging- -the contents of a large wooden crate, but the moment they saw Luke come around the corner two of the five produced guns, and one was an M-14 machine gun.  
Lead rain cut across Luke’s face and chest with all the impact of a handful of thrown pea-gravel.  Luke squinted.  He had only caught a bullet in the eye once, but having one of those suckers stuck under his eyelid while still hot from the barrel wasn’t something he -ever- wanted to try again, even momentarily.  
  
“-You guys just don’t learn, do ya?”  Luke yelled back at the shooters, and charged.    
  
They scattered like bowling pins with the impact, and three of them made off into the shadows.  One of the two left spotted a forklift nearby, and scrambled into the driver’s seat, firing up the engine.    
Luke caught the oncoming forklift’s rising horizontal tines with the dexterity of a seasoned bull-leaper, and halted its ramming maneuver by bracing his feet and lifting straight upwards.  The forklift’s wheels lost traction and spun, glaring headlights picking out the mahogany sweep of unbroken muscle through a wide tear in Luke’s yellow shirt, and glinting off his steel headband in the darkness.  
  
“LAST STOP, SUCKAH!”  Luke snarled, turning the open-sided vehicle ninety degrees and giving it a good shake.  
  
The thug fell out onto the pavement with a cry, and lay there holding his head.  
Luke set the slightly bent forklift down, and looked around for stragglers.  The one who’d gotten the worst of the earlier collision was getting his bearings now, but he took one look at the forklift driver, then another at Iron Fist dragging his three remaining allies out of the shadows by two right wrists and a -foot-, and surrendered quickly.  
Luke added the forklift driver to the growing pile of semiconscious bad guys, and stood glaring down at them, hands on hips.  
  
“We’re lookin’ fo the Green Goblin.  Now which one a’you punks feels like talkin?”  
  
“I don’t know where he hangs out man, that guy’s a freak!”  The thug who’d surrendered first yelped quickly, “-he keeps to himself, and who tha hell wants him, yanno?”  
  
“-I- want ‘im,” Luke declared.  He prodded the forklift driver with the toe of his boot, “-hey!  Toro!  You seen the Goblin around here, or what?”  
  
“F$*#! off…”  
  
Luke smiled, picked up a length of steel signpost-pipe lying a short distance away, and bound the forklift-driver’s arms to his sides with it.     
  
“Now…”  He said, “-let’s try that one again…”  
  
“Luke,” Danny interrupted, quiet but clear.  
  
“Whadda you got, Fist?”  Luke asked, without looking up.  
  
“There’s somebody flying around near that bridge,” Danny pointed, focusing far out over the glassy black water of the harbor.    
  
Luke took a stride back from their captives, and looked.  The repairs to the Manhattan Bridge were nearly complete, but the part under construction was lit at night, and- …nothing.  
  
“You sure it was a dude?”  
  
“Well, it could have been a woman,” Danny admitted, “-but I definitely saw someone riding a glider.”  
  
Luke pressed the stud on the side of one of his heavy steel wristbands down.  
 _  
“Power Man to Iron Man.  You up there?”_  
 _  
“-fzkkkk- -Just wrapping something up here, whadda you got, Powers?”_ Tony replied, after a good six second pause.  
 _  
“Glider.  Manhattan Bridge.  Don’t know who it is yet, but get yo jets out here.”  
  
“Kk-On my way,”_ Tony acknowledged.  
  
  
Less than two minutes later, Iron Man was there.  And  _gone_ , a fading blue-white spark streaking out over the water.  
 _  
“Ckk-I’ve got him on radar…”_ Tony reported. _  
  
“SHIELD?”_  Luke asked.  …They’d nearly been arrested for hassling two glider-mounted SHIELD agents already…  
 _  
“No be- kkk- on,”_  Tony said, with what sounded like satisfaction.  
 _  
“Go get ‘im, man!”_  Luke shouted into his wristband, putting a boot gently but firmly on the neck of one of the thugs who had begun to inch away.  
 _  
“Shkkkkrsshhh–lfway home-”_  Luke’s radio replied, distractedly… before static strangled the channel entirely.    
  
Luke frowned down at his wristband, and pressed the button down again, as firmly as he dared.  It was rated for a hundred and fifty pounds of pressure before keying anyway, but it was so easy to misjudge these things…  
Static.  
Luke turned to Danny, standing stock still against the lights of the harbor.  
  
“Hey.  You got your radio on you?”  
  
“You know it messes with my ki…”  Danny began.  
  
Luke sighed, took his wristband off, and delicately slid the control bar inside to a different channel.  
 _  
“Krcc-Power Man to Spider-Man, come in.”  
  
“Powers!  What just ate Iron Man?” _ Peter demanded, with a noise in the background that sounded like wind.  
 _  
“Be cool.  We can see ‘im from the docks.  Somethin’ must be fudgin’ up his station,”_  Luke assured him.  
 _  
“Okay, okay, GOOD, I’ll be there in a-chchk-’“_   -Thwip-!  “-Hey guys,” Peter said, plopping down onto a mooring bollard.  
  
“S’up, Spider,” Luke grunted.  
  
“Where are they-” Peter peered out towards the lights of the bridge, and spotted movement, “-ah, there, right.  See ya-” -Thwip!-  
  
…And he was gone again.  
  
“I -hate- it when they do that…”  Luke began.  
  
“Send a dragon to fight a dragon,” Danny shrugged, and folded his arms, still watching.  
  
Erratic flickers and darts of pale light could be seen from time to time, but little else.    
  
“Is Iron man fightin’ the Green Goblin out there?”  One of the thugs that Danny had taken down asked, rising cautiously to his elbows for a better view.  
  
“What’s it to ya?”  Luke asked.  
  
“Well, it’d be fun to see Iron Man get his can kicked, but the Goblin’s fuckin’ dangerous, ya know?”  The thug admitted, with a grin that showed a gleam of gold on the right hand side.  
  
“What do you know ‘bout it?”  Luke asked.  
  
“Shut your %*&*! mouth, Paulie.  We don’t owe this guy -nothin’-,” the forklift driver snapped.  
  
“Screw YOU, man!  What if that fire had spread, huh?”  Paulie shot back.  
  
Luke paused with his fist cocked back, and decided to let them fight.  
  
“Yeah, dat freak’s crazy, we don’t owe him nothin’ either,” the coward from earlier agreed.  
  
“C’mon, man, let the capes dust ‘im so we don’t have to,” Paulie argued.  
  
“You _brain-donors_  are gonna get us -waxed-.  If tha boss hears you pissed off tha Goblin, you’re gonna _pay_ ,” the forklift driver began, angrily.    
  
“I’m startin’ ta think  _YOU_  work for the Goblin,  _Mitch_  you  _name-droppin’_ sonofabitch,” Paulie cut him off.  
  
Luke wrapped a massive hand across the driver’s mouth, and looked back at the other two.  
  
“You were sayin’?”  He prompted.  
  
“Well… -You want the Green Goblin, you can  _have_  ‘im.  That fucker brings the heat down anyway.  Word is he torched that warehouse he was usin’ himself an’ flew off in different threads.”  
  
“What does he look like now?”  Danny asked.  
  
“They say he’s gotta helmet,” the coward volunteered.  
  
“Yeah, a black helmet with a visor that hides his face, and leathers like wunna them street-racin’ biker punks,” Paulie elaborated.  
  
“Did -you- see this?”  Luke asked.  
  
“Well no, but- -word gets around, you know what I’m sayin?  Especially when the fruitcake blows up halffa Manhattan Island just ‘cause he’s  _pissed off_ …”  
  
Suddenly there was a flash of light out on the center of the bridge, then a bright point of light chasing a more subdued one through the girders away from Manhattan.  
The watchers on shore weren’t even sure who was chasing who anymore, but the speed of  _both_  fliers seemed a deadly impossibility.  Then they vanished, disappearing into the forest of buildings on the other side.  
  
-  
  
Westcorp parking garage, NYC.  2:10 AM (same night).  
  
  
“ARRRAAAAaagggggh!”  
  
Tony threw his helmet across the basement parking garage in which he’d taken refuge, bouncing it once off the concrete floor and narrowly missing a Cadillac.  
He stood, still trembling, and raked a hand back through his sweaty hair.  
  
“Almost… fucking… _had_  him…”  Tony hissed, softly.  
  
And he -had-.  
Before his quarry had flown straight into- -and apparently  _through_ \- -the teeth of a SHIELD ambush.  Oh, the agents had given it the old college try… but they’d only had standard gliders, not whatever that thin, sled-looking thing was, and they hadn’t known about the multiband jamming.  
Visual contact HAD to be maintained at all times, or-  
Tony shut his eyes, and swallowed painfully.  
They wouldn’t have been able to head him off -either-, if that hot-dogging terrorist hadn’t woken them all up  _first_ …  
Or…  
Had he been chasing the Green Goblin at all?  
The evidence hinted at yes, but some of the details weren’t right.  Weren’t…  
The tech was a logical progression of what he’d seen in the burned-out warehouse, the speed and reflexes matched, but…  
The guy just didn’t -act- like the Goblin.  And he flew like… he  _enjoyed_ it?  
Could well be the Goblin playing head games with a new persona, but-  
  
“Oh,  _shit_ …”  
  
Tony instantly ducked his head out of line with the garage security camera, and shielded his face with his arm.  The damage, if that thing was on, had already been done.  
And if course, he saw from the red monitor light, it was.  
Tony sighed, smirked without much humor, and collected his helmet from behind the wheel of a white Jeep, keeping his face shielded in case there were other cameras.  
Once he had his helmet back on, he took in the security cameras and wiring system.  
Okay.  
Okay, this could be worse, it was just a dummy system.  No motion-tracking hardware, and nine times out of ten the signal fed only into a videotape in the security room, wherever that was.  Or there could be an insomniac security guard who worked for the Maggia and was on the phone blowing his identity right now.  One never knew.  
Tony found the stairwell, gimmicked the lock, and walked up quickly.  He snuck around the carpeted upper levels of some kind of office building until he found a building plan on the wall, and let himself into the security room.  
 _Perfect._  
Little more than a closet full of stacked videotape decks, all recording, and a shelving unit.    
Tony thought briefly of magnetizing his repulsor disks and erasing everything in the room, but that might be noticed in the morning…  
No.    
  
He stopped all the tapes, and peeled the white handwritten labels off carefully with a thin blade hidden in the index finger of his left gauntlet.  Then he swapped the labels with those on a set of tapes recorded a month ago, and put last month’s tapes into the corresponding machines, cued up to the same time.  There would be a momentary glitch, but nobody really watched these things at normal speed anyway…  
Tony magnetically erased the videotapes that might have had his face on them, fixed on the old labels, and stuck them in last month’s tape cases.  
There.  
The tampering might be discovered -someday-, but not anytime soon, and what would it really tell them if blank tapes from a month ago -were- discovered?  
He…  
Needed to get out of here.  Now.    
Tony avoided the security cameras in the stairwells by going out a window.  He pushed it shut behind himself carefully, and magnetically re-locked it.  Then he cut power, dropped eight stories, and caught himself just in front of the garage entrance as if he’d never seen it before, dropping lightly to the ground and walking away until he could-  
Power instability warning light.  Oh, that fucking _figured_ …  
 _  
“Fzzzt- -Hey, boss?”_  Tony’s radio crackled.  
 _  
“Kkck-…Yeah, Spider, what?”_  Tony replied tiredly, reaching up to key his radio.  
 _  
“Okay, he… got away, right?  Are you coming back, or are you still, um…?”_  
 _  
“I’m taking the long way back,”_ Tony sighed,  _“-kkch-I’ll see you tomorrow.”_  
 _  
“Oh.  Well, I know a guy who wanted to talk to you, so I’ll just send him by where you are with a bag.  Goodnight!”_ Peter told him cheerfully, and vanished off the channel.  
 _  
“SPI-DER!”_  Tony snarled.  
  
Soft, dead airwaves.  
Tony snorted, and let go of the comm. button.  
  
-  
  
Harry and Peter’s apartment, 7:00 AM (later that morning).  
  
  
Peter’s alarm clock went off.  
He patted ineffectually at the snooze button, and accidentally hit the corner of the clock with the base of his palm.  
-Thwip!-  
The alarm clock fell on the floor, still buzzing and now silly-stringed in web.    
It was going to be one of  _those_ days, Peter reflected with a sigh.  
He got up and unplugged the clock, shoving it under the bed to deal with later.  He got dressed, costume first, then street clothes on over it.    
Peter scooped the textbooks on his desk into his backpack, stuffed his mask in against the spines, and tried to remember whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday.  
 _…Wednesday_ , he decided, and half-ran downstairs.  
Peter looked through the contents of the fridge critically, and thought about pancakes, and about omelets with salsa…  
A slight noise behind him brought Peter’s spider-sharp senses to screaming wakefulness, and he whirled around, poised.  
Harry had fallen asleep in the leather chair by the balcony doors again, and was just now waking up.  
Slowly.  
  
“…When’d you get in?”  Harry asked, frowning against the morning sunlight.    
  
“A little after two,” Peter replied, letting out the breath he’d taken.  
  
“-Oh,” Harry said wryly, after a long moment of mental arithmetic.  
  
“When did -you- get in?”  Peter asked, settling on a cherry pastry and tearing open the wrapper as he walked over.  
  
Harry was in his pajamas and bathrobe, and judging from the ungelled wavy chaos of his hair he must have showered at least a few hours ago…  
  
“Ah… late.  Later.  I couldn’ find a cab,” Harry explained.  
  
“…Are you  _drunk_?”  Peter realized, as he caught the scent of bourbon.  
  
“Not anymore.  I- I don’t think…”  Harry replied, with a more truthful so-so motion of his hand.  
  
“Great.  We’ve got class in half an hour,” Peter stated, flatly.  
  
“M’sorry, man,” Harry said, shutting his eyes, “-you can web, right?  Or… take a bus?”  
  
“Yeah, that’s…”  Peter broke off and sighed, taking up one of Harry’s long-fingered hands and squeezing it.  He wasn’t really sure what to -do- with the hand afterwards, so he put it down and took a step back.   “-Just… sort yourself out and meet me in the quad for lunch, all right?”  
  
“I can do that,” Harry nodded, looking up.  He paused a moment, “-no, screw that, I’m -buying- you lunch.  I’ll uh- -I’ll call and see if MJ wants to come out with us too,” Harry promised.  
  
“That would be cool…”  Peter agreed, perking up at the thought in a way that just made Harry’s head hurt worse.  
  
-  
  
Luke Cage’s apartment over the Gem Theater, 9:20 AM (same day).  
  
  
Smooth sheets, and smooth skin beneath the fingertips of Tony’s left hand.  
The backs of creamy-soft thighs with a tan that might be either natural or studiously nude beach…  
The backs of his fingers just tracing her, mapping the sweet curves of her upturned ass.  
Shifting, squirming appreciation, and a stifled whimper.  
God she was beautiful, lying there under diffuse, cloud-tempered light that somehow told him they were in London…  
A day to stay in, and see what it would  _take_.  
To enjoy the feel of her, and the scent of her body reawakening, beneath whatever the hotel used that smelled like dry roses.  
Tony lay on his right side and stomach feeling warm and sleepy, right forearm tucked under his chin while his left hand played.    
Bits of conversation came to him, a memory within a memory.  They weren’t important.  
  
Skin had a give, a complexity of texture that no machine could fully match, even where shapes and outward geometry could be duplicated.  It held a fascination for him that he wasn’t about to try explaining out loud.  An organic singularity.  
Another shift of her hips, a catch of breath, and a knee drawn up slightly.  
Tony’s fingers followed unhurriedly, skimming lightly across open country, sometimes stroking unapologetically into the warm, fascinating shadows her body presented him with…  
  
A strange impression, both of skin and smooth-woven cloth.  
Tony’s fingers curled around both, and he woke up in a loose pile of blankets and floor pillows in the lounge corner over by the stereo.  
There was a fading scent of incense in the still air, and the distant, orderly confusion of mid-morning traffic below on forty-second street.  
Steve’s brown bomber jacket was gone.  -He would be at Avengers tower by now.  
Luke was asleep in his bed on the other side of the room, snoring like a hibernating bear.  
Danny sat on the new hardwood floor just off the edge of the lounge corner rug, legs folded in a challenging meditation pose.  
Tony flexed the fingers of his left hand around a fold of the blanket he’d slept on, and inhaled deeply.  The faint scent of desirable woman and complex rose perfume remained.    
  
“Danny Rand, what  _have_ you been doing on this blanket?”  Tony murmured, looking up with a smirk.  
  
Danny blinked, and glanced down at him.  
  
“…Why do you ask?”  He replied, after a telling pause.  
  
Tony balled up the blanket in question, and threw it at Danny’s head.  
  
-  
  
Downtown NYC, 4:40 PM.  
  
  
Tony almost missed it.  
He was flying low, below the level of the New York skyline, and barely faster than the cars on the street over a dozen stories down.  
A window-washer, twelve feet below his securely cabled platform and partly upside-down in an attitude of falling.  
Tony reacted instantly, braking and coming up under where the man would be, and… looked up.  
The window washer looked down at him uncomfortably, still suspended in midair by some unseen force.  
  
“-Am I missing something here?”  Tony asked, maneuvering up to within arm’s length of the man and hovering.  
  
“Can you, uh, gimme a hand?”  The window-washer asked, apologetically.  
  
No weapons or external-source energies, Tony’s scans told him.   
  
“Sure,” Tony locked wrists with the man, and returned him to his suspended platform.  
 _  
“Thanks,”_ the window-washer breathed, sliding down with his back against the window glass, as far from the edge of the platform as he could get.    
  
The wind-toughened face above the window-washer’s light blue cold-weather coveralls was pale, and sweating.  
Tony glanced at the weight rating sticker on the platform’s frame, then touched down beside him.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
“Yeah, just- -lemmie catch my breath, here…” the man nodded.  
  
A radio bungee-corded into place on one side of the platform was playing  _The Beach Boys’ ‘California Girls’_.  
Tony examined the side-gate that had come unlatched.  A little bit corroded from the rain, the gate’s latch hadn’t fully closed.  Tony played with the catch, wiggling it back and forth a few times until it worked, at least for the moment.  
  
“-That needs to be replaced,” he stated, pointing out the latch.  
  
The window washer nodded, smiling wryly.  
  
“The name’s Jerome Perkins.  Thanks for the hand up.”  
  
“No problem.  You were doing a lot better than most people do anyway…”  Tony smirked behind his faceplate.  
  
“Yeah, that’s ah… I can kinda opt out of gravity when I think about it real hard, but then I’m just  _stuck_ there, you know?  I can’t fly for real,” Jerome explained.  
  
“Well, you’re in the right profession,” Tony said, considering, “-lemmie make a call here…”  
  
He reached up and pretended to key his left helmet radio.  
  
“Hey base, this is Iron Man.”  
  
Pause.  
  
“No, things are fine, but I got a question for you,” Tony said, still talking to himself.  
  
Pause.  
  
“Okay, I’m talking to this guy who can cancel out gravity, but then he just floats there like a soap bubble and he can’t- -yeah, I’ll ask-”  
  
Pause.  
  
“-Can you be blown around by the wind?”  Tony asked, turning back to Jerome for a moment.  
  
“Yes, I  _hate_  it when that happens,” Jerome replied.  
  
“-He says yes,” Tony said, pretending to return to his conversation.  
  
Pause.  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
Pause.  
  
“Okay…  I’ll tell him.  Thanks.”  
  
Pause.  
  
“-Heh.”  
  
Tony pretended to let go of the helmet radio’s button, and turned back to Jerome.   
  
“You need an air horn.”  
  
“But I’m tryin’ -not- to get noticed.  My boss doesn’t exactly know about this…”  Jerome sighed.  
  
“Well, actually all you need is a compressed gas cylinder,” Tony explained, “-a can of PAM or hairspray would work too.”  
  
“Come again?”  Jerome replied, now  _completely_  lost.  
  
“Okay, you saw the moon landing, right?  Once there’s no gravity, astronauts turn their space capsules around with maneuvering jets.  You take the top off the air horn or whatever, point it away from the direction you wanna go, and press the valve so it sprays,” Tony instructed, “-there’s _your_  maneuvering jet.”  
  
“Well, shit…”  Jerome considered, “-I’m gonna have to try that in the garage at home first.”  
  
“Mm.  Probably a good idea,” Tony admitted.  
  
Jerome got up, and the two of them looked out over the city for a while.  
  
“You weren’t on your way somewhere, were ya?”  Jerome asked, finally.  
  
“No, I was out looking for the Green Goblin.  …Come to think of it, you window guys probably see a lot up here, don’t you?”  Tony guessed.  
  
“Yeah, I’ve seen the Goblin out a few times- -not today, though.  I’ve seen you, your best pal War Machine, The Human Torch, Spider-Man  _lots_  of times, some punk on a flying skateboard…”   
  
“Wait- -black leathers, full-face helmet?”  Tony asked, quickly.  
  
“Yeah, that’s the guy,” Jerome nodded.  
  
“What was he doing?”  
  
“It was right at dawn, when I was up on the roof setting up my gear.  He was just flying in a straight line, you know?  Like he had somewhere to be.  I think he was comin’ up from somewhere east of here, maybe across the river.”  
 _  
Manhattan Bridge_ , Tony thought with a thrill of predatory excitement.  
  
“Which way was he headed?”  
  
“Soho, it looked like, but he coulda turned off later,” Jerome admitted.  
  
“Soho?”  Tony echoed, thoughtfully.  
  
“Yeah.  -Go figure, huh?”  
 _  
“Crkk- -Cap to Iron Man.”_  
  
“-‘Scuse me, I gotta take this-” Tony said, holding up a hand and keying his scrambled-channel left hand helmet-radio for real.   _“-Iron Man here, go ahead.”_  
 _  
“Are you busy?”_   Steve asked.  
 _  
“Not really, why?”_  
 _  
“Good.  Meet me at the Tyrannosaurus sculpture in Central Park, I want to show you something,”_ Steve said, sounding pleased with himself.  
 _  
“Kkcrk–Okay, I’ll see you there,”_  Tony grinned.    
  
The radio clicked off.  
  
“You gotta go?”  Jerome guessed.  
  
“Duty calls,” Tony said seriously, glad he didn’t have to say it with a straight face.  
  
“Thanks again for earlier,” Jerome said, offering Iron Man his hand.  
  
“No problem Jerome,” Tony smiled, shaking the proffered hand carefully with his own metal-gauntleted one, “-if you see the Green Goblin or the Midnight Racer out again, give the Avengers a call for me, would you?”  
  
“-‘The Midnight Racer’?”  Jerome repeated.  
  
“Captain America named him that,” Tony said, pausing in mid-air to answer, “-we were all tired of calling him ‘that biker guy’ anyway…”  
  
“Oh, I gotcha.  -Well, watch that first step,” Jerome smiled, waving.  
  
“You too, man.”  
  
Tony took off skywards.  
  
-  
  
Partially converted warehouse near Central Park, NYC.  5:03 PM (same day).  
  
  
“What the hell happened in here…?”  Tony asked, staring around at the walls of the empty warehouse.  The red brick was scorched in some areas, and newly replaced in others.  Some of the marks on the concrete floor were burned chalk-white.  Cooked-off ammunition, maybe?  
  
“Remember when ‘The Sons of the Serpent’ crashed the World Music Festival last year?”  Steve began.  
  
“Oh, this is where you finally tracked them down to?”  Tony guessed, looking at the room with greater interest.  
  
“Yes.  -Come on upstairs with me,” Steve said, smiling.  
  
Tony thought about how easy it would be to make the wings on Steve’s cowl swivel and rise or droop to match his facial expressions, and smirked.  
  
“-Have you figured out why we’re here yet?”  Steve asked as they climbed the loud, metal-frame staircase.  
  
“No, it’s just- -good to see you.”  
  
The door at the top of the stairs led into a long hallway with two far-spaced doors on the opposite side, perhaps offices.  Steve took a key out of a small pocket hidden along his waistband, and opened the nearer one.  
Tony fell silent.  
What he could see of the room within was two large sets of multi-paned windows, -clearly built into the warehouse’s high brick wall in the first place- and a smooth expanse of old but well well-kept hardwood floor, glowing in the afternoon sunlight.    
Hm.  
-Cha-clunk-.  
Steve looked over questioningly, then corrected his gaze an inch or so higher for the extra height Tony’s roller-skate wheels gave him.  
Tony glided out across the room, paused with his gauntlets on the low brick windowsill, then pushed off and skated backwards.  He turned, reversing direction, and looked around more, still skating.  
The room was a long rectangle of open floor with large windows spaced evenly along the entire length of the outer wall.  It reminded Tony of a dance studio or martial arts dojo, except for the kitchen built into the short left-hand wall, and the modest pile of cardboard boxes surrounding Steve’s old Army foot locker against the right-hand one.  There was a doorway set into the right-hand wall as well, open and shadowed.  
Steve came in, and shut the door behind him.  
Tony stopped in the center of the softly gleaming wooden floor with an efficient twist and took his helmet off, his back to the high windows.  
  
“When did you get this place?”  He asked, fascinated.  
  
“I picked up the keys this morning,” Steve replied, “-do you like it?”  
  
“It’s  _beautiful_ …”  Tony told him frankly, “-but what made you decide to go looking for an apartment in the middle of a goblin-hunt?”  He added, skating closer and stopping again.  
  
“A conversation I had with Pietro, actually,” Steve admitted, “-you see, his room is right next to mine…”  
  
“-Ah,” Tony nodded once, amused.  
  
“Anyway, the owner hasn’t been able to rent this place out since the ‘Sons of the Serpent’ were arrested here, but it’s not like they scare -me-, so it all worked out great.”  
  
“-Who owns this place?”  Tony asked, suddenly.  
  
“Danny’s company, Rand-Meachum,” Steve replied guilelessly.  
  
“O-kay, you just broke a truce I had with Luke, but you didn’t know about it, so I’m pretty sure this won’t count,” Tony calculated, optimistically.  
  
“But Luke was there when I signed the lease,” Steve frowned, “-I would have said he looked  _happy_  about it.”  
  
“Great.  It must only apply to me, then,” Tony said, carefully.  
  
Steve decided not to mention the part about Luke telling him he was ‘doing them all a favor’.  He was quite familiar these kinds of running ‘you’re an easy lay’ jokes from traveling with the Howling Commandos during the war, and while he trusted Tony not to resort to the use of actual  _explosives_ , letting this come to a head now could only serve as a distraction.  And they had a Goblin to catch.  
Except the man was like smoke, like he didn’t even exist unless he was out wrecking havoc.  The Green Goblin had had a lair in the past though, and it was a good bet he had one again, -somewhere-…  
Somewhere like…  
  
“Tony, how many other buildings does Rand-Meachum own?”  Steve asked.  
  
“A lot.  Why do you ask?”  Tony replied.  
  
“How many of those can have been leased out since the Green Goblin’s old hideout burned down?”  Steve pointed out.  
  
“I love you,” Tony said decidedly, then more to himself, “-how the hell did I  _miss_ that…?”    
  
There had to be -dozens- of real estate companies in New York City, but within a time window of less than two weeks…  
Tony seized his helmet, and put it back on.  
 _  
“Kckk- -Iron Man to Iron Fist…”_  
  
  
The sun had set into a red haze behind the city skyline.    
Tony sat happily on the floor in boxers and Steve’s blue bathrobe, eating General Tso’s chicken out of a take-out carton by the light of his arc reactor.  The only other light in the room came from a small bulb under the range hood, ill-equipped to illuminate even the whole kitchen.  The diffuse light of the city beyond the windows was more than enough for Steve’s keen night vision though, and Tony liked watching him move in low light, a big pale shadow, light on his feet, and topped with shifting hints of reflected gold and silver.    
Steve returned with a handful of records, and sat back down beside Tony.  
  
“Two of these are yours,” he said, setting them down on his sleeping bag and picking up the open carton of sweet and sour pork.  
  
“Mmh.  Yeah, I was hoping you hadn’t brought those back yet…”  Tony said, picking them up eagerly.   _  
  
‘Get Your Kicks on_ _Route 66’_  and  _‘Jailhouse Rock’_.  -Not his absolute favorites, but not bad.    
-Whatever jazz record Steve had put on in the meantime wasn’t bad either, but he’d be damned if he’d admit that without a decent break-in period.  
  
“How _did_  you fit all these in the Jukebox, anyway?”  Steve asked, tapping the top edge of ‘Jailhouse Rock’.  
  
“If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” Tony warned.  
  
“-Oh.  Well, that’s all right then…”  Steve smiled.  
  
“I’m kidding.  I’ll show you when I re-build it,” Tony promised, and leaned over to kiss him.    
  
Steve tasted like root beer and Chinese food… and something else that had always reminded him of mineral water but wasn’t.  The serum had done a lot of things to Steve’s body chemistry, and Tony was pretty sure that some of them were still undocumented.  …Had the -shape- of Steve’s lips changed too, Tony wondered, or would Steve have felt like this- -tasted like this- in the late thirties?    
Hard to concentrate on that question.  
Nice lips, definitely.  Well shaped, and the lower one was full.  
Didn’t usually kiss like it was a contest either, although he could…  
Warm silk, with a hint of fine-grit sandpaper around the edges.  
 _…Damn……_  
The kiss finally broke, and Tony breathed, eyes shut.  
  
“…Where did that come from?”  Steve asked, his voice a little rough.  
  
“I don’t know,” Tony swallowed, “-want another one?”  
  
“-Yeah…”  
  
The late thirties could lump it, Tony decided.  
  
-  
  
The roof of the World Trade Center’s south tower, 9:38 PM (same night).  
  
  
War Machine crouched unmoving at the edge of the roof, scanning.  His silhouette was slight and boxy against the starry night sky, obviously just another piece of the monolithic new skyscraper’s high-tech security equipment.  
Except he wasn’t.  
The modular camera that folded into the heavy armor of his left shoulder was already recording, patiently awaiting the command to synch its precise servo-driven movements with the direction of his eyes.  If the pattern of the last few days held, his target would be passing by within an hour or so.    
It was windy this high up, and a faint tracery of frost had already formed across the cooling surfaces of War Machine’s two-tone gray armor.  A cold front was moving in, and it was cold inside the armor too.  War Machine left his suit’s environmental controls alone.  Heat would make him stand out to an infa-red scanner, and he’d taken worse cold in an unpressurized cabin over the English Channel.  
-There-.  
War Machine ordered the camera to zoom in sharply, and kept his eyes trained on the quick-moving black shape as it doglegged between the buildings three blocks north of his current position.  So, the Midnight Racer was learning, no longer traveling in straight lines and relying exclusively on speed.  That fit his profile perfectly, but it probably wouldn’t be very effective against the Green Goblin…  
  
  
Peter clung to the warm shadowed wall beneath a nearby office building’s side ventilation duct, and watched the lurking silhouette above him silently.  Something like a small weapon on War Machine’s left shoulder had suddenly come to life, tracking.  Had he seen the Goblin?  Why wasn’t he reporting it?  Peter’s Spider-comm. remained silent… though admittedly, right across from the north tower’s massive radio antenna was not the best place to send a clear transmission…  
  
War Machine unfolded himself after a long moment, standing tall above the railing of the roof, then jumped clean over it into the deep gulf of air below, no jets.  He fired them barely thirty stories from the ground, caught himself, and cruised away unobtrusively in the direction his shoulder-weapon had tracked earlier.  War Machine -had- the Avengers’ communication frequencies already, and even if he couldn’t decode Tony and Peter’s private channel, it would probably get his attention.  
  
“All right, ‘Big Brother’, what are you up to…?”  Peter muttered, webbing cautiously after him once War Machine had turned a corner up ahead.

-


	7. Chapter 7

-

Steve’s loft, 12:40 AM.  
  
  
There was a muffled -thonk- on the window.  
Steve looked up from pouring a glass of milk, and saw Peter clinging miserably to the nearest window frame.  He was shivering, and his whole costume seemed a shade lighter than it was supposed to be.  There was actually a rime of ice across the lower front of his mask from the condensation of his breathing.  
  
“Peter-?”    
  
Steve let him in, quickly.  
Tony subconsciously heard the sound of the window opening, and went from dead asleep in Steve’s US Army sleeping bag to standing pressed up against the cold brick wall between two of the large windows in about a second and a half.  
No gunfire.  No grenade being thrown into the room.  Nobody yelling at him in Vietnamese.    
Okay, that was good.  
Tony heard Peter’s voice and felt the chill of the room simultaneously.  He hissed sharply through his teeth, and snatched the blue bathrobe off the floor.  
  
“Steve, how did he know where-” Tony began, knotting the belt as he turned.  He caught sight of Peter, and stared.  “-Are you being followed?”  Tony demanded, quickly.  
  
Peter dropped to the floor inside with less grace than usual, but kept his footing.  Steve put both hands on his shoulders, steadying him.  The fabric of his costume felt damp, and it was frozen in places.  
  
“-Uh-uh-h…”  Peter replied, with a jerky shake of his head.  
  
“Shower,” Tony ordered without raising his voice, “-Now.”  
  
“-W-where?”  Peter asked, looking up.  
  
“Come on,” said Steve, steering him.  
  
They got Peter into the bathtub and turned barely lukewarm water onto him, half-frozen costume and all.  Peter bent his head under the spray of the shower and hugged his knees, thawing slowly.  After a while he peeled off his mask, took a deep breath, and rubbed his face in his hands.  Tony turned the water temperature up a few degrees and waited, watching him attentively.  There was a fleck of frostbite on the end of the young man’s nose, and two small dots high on his right cheek, but nothing serious.    
  
“So,” Tony began briskly, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and folding his arms, “-what the hell happened?”  
  
“Fol-followed War Machine…  Midnight Racer…  Ea-East River,” Peter summarized.  
  
“You fell in the  _East River_?”  Tony repeated.  
  
Peter nodded.  
  
“Well, let me know if you develop any new super-powers,” Tony said, only half kidding.  
  
“That’s s-SO not funny…”  Peter muttered  
  
-  
  
Steve came back in with cups of hot chocolate, and handed them each one.  He remained standing in the doorway afterwards, pretty well blocking it.  
  
“-Why don’t you start at the beginning, Peter,” Steve suggested calmly.  
  
Peter sat dripping, in costume minus his mask, in a bathtub full of warm water.    
In Captain America’s bathroom.    
Drinking hot chocolate.  
With his boss.  
  
“This is  _not_  the strangest debriefing I’ve ever had…”  Peter reminded himself, firmly.  “-Okay, ahh… I was out- generally seeking evil on the hoof, and uh…  I saw War Machine kind of hunkered down on the one of the World Trade Center towers.  I mean, I heard him when he landed there, and then he began with the hiding.”  
  
“Go on,” Steve frowned.  
  
“I uh- -I figured he was looking for the Green Goblin and all, but then he took off after something without calling it in, so I…  followed him.  Turns out he stalks the Midnight Racer.”  
  
“-Was there a battle?”  Steve asked, quickly.  
  
“No, you see, I don’t think the Racer knew War Machine was there, and War Machine didn’t know -I- was there, so it was like this chain- stalking- thing…  …Which makes me wonder if there was someone else behind  _me_ \- -anyway, War Machine went up into the steelwork of the Williamsburg Bridge to watch the Racer, who was flying around East River Park and under the base of the bridge, And I was watching both of them, also on the bridge.”  
  
“Why didn’t you call this in on our secure channel?”  Tony asked, nonplussed.  
  
“Well, I… wasn’t sure if War Machine would be able to pick that up,” Peter admitted.  
  
“Peter, the frequency we communicate on isn’t even technically a radio wave anymore,   -and- it would take an advanced degree in applied mathematics-“  
  
“-It’s still an energy source, boss,” Peter argued.  
  
“So get  _behind_  something, wait until a vehicle with a CB radio drives across, and use it for ECM cover,” Tony argued back, starting to get annoyed.  
  
“That is a- fine idea, and it did occur to me,” Peter assured him, “-eventually.  But the problem was there was -ice- under the bridge.  And it fell off.  And I webbed, but the angle was too low.”  
  
Tony sighed, and took a drink from the cup in his hand absently, forgetting that it wasn’t coffee.    
  
“Mmph-! …Mm,” he glanced down at the cup dubiously, and dabbed his mustache with the edge of his bathrobe sleeve.  “-Ahem.  So, you fell in the river…”  
  
“Yeah, but like I said I webbed, so I just climbed back up.  And then I was freezing and my Spider-comm. was shorted out anyway, so I came here.”  
  
“…Okay,” Tony nodded once thoughtfully, and put his hand on Peter’s shoulder.  
  
“Why don’t you stay in here and finish getting scrubbed up,” Steve suggested kindly, in that way that wasn’t open for discussion.    
  
“I’ll do that,” Peter agreed, “do you have a, um, towel or something?”  
  
Steve got him one.  It was olive green, with oddly simple stitching on both ends that made Peter mortally certain there were museum directors who would kill him for it with a clear conscience.  But it was clean, so he asked no questions.  
  
-  
  
Tony leaned his hands against the brick windowsill, and waited out the uncomfortable silence until they heard the shower turn back on.  
Steve sat back against the windowsill beside Tony, and re-folded his arms.  
  
“This can’t go on,” he stated, flatly.  
  
“I know.  -This is my fault,” Tony sighed.  
  
“Peter’s definitely picked up on the fact that you don’t trust War Machine, but I should have handled this problem when it first came up…”   
  
“I don’t trust War Machine for _several_ reasons, Steve,” Tony pointed out, “-and the fact that he didn’t call in seeing the Racer tonight is just one more on that list.”  
  
“Well, I can’t exactly ask War Machine to fess up now, can I?  Not without implying that I had him followed.  …Avengers have to trust each other, Tony.”  
  
Then why the hell did you make HIM an Avenger?!  Tony thought, frowning out at the dark bar of Central Park without really seeing it.  Steve should have been halfway to the Williamsburg Bridge by now…  
  
“What are you going to do about this?”  Tony asked, aloud.  
  
“I can’t have your team and my Avengers putting each other in the hospital,” Steve began grimly.  “…So I’m going to ask you to work with War Machine until I can be sure that won’t happen.”  
  
Tony’s silence was complete, shocked, and deadly.  
Then slowly, he nodded.    
Steve was -asking- him, not just slinging orders, and there was a great deal to be said for keeping your friends close and your enemies closer…  
…As long as you sorted out which was which -first-.  
  
-  
  
Outside the Stark Industries complex, Long Island, NY.  2:11 PM (same day).  
  
_  
‘Black night it’s not right,  
I don’t feel so bright,  
I don’t care to sit tight.  
Maybe I’ll find on the way down the line  
that I’m free, free to be me.  
Black night is a long way from home.  
I don’t need a dark tree,  
I don’t want a rough sea-’_  
  
“IRON MAN, THIS IS THE POLICE!  PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HELMET, AND STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!”    
  
“Oh brother…”  Tony muttered, reaching up to shut off his helmet radio.  
_  
‘I can’t feel, I can’t see.  
Maybe I’ll find on the way down the-’_  
  
He turned around, hands on his helmet.  
Wow.    
Four black and whites, two unmarked, and a swat van that had all been shrewd enough to assemble quietly in the parking lot behind him sometime in the past two minutes, in  _complete_  radio silence.  Curiouser and curiouser.  Lots of small arms, two shotguns, a- - _grenade launcher?!_  
  
“Screw this!”  Tony fired his bootjets and shot straight upwards until the cars in the parking lot below looked like an assortment of small glass beads.  
  
A firing order and hasty cross-chatter about resisting arrest and probable escape trajectories assaulted his ears.  Something exploded down and to the left of him…  and in two more heartbeats, he was well out of range.  
_  
“Ckcc- -Hey!  This is Iron Man!”_  Tony yelled, speaking directly onto the police-band radio frequency.   _“Who’s in charge down there?”  
  
“Lt. Graham Grady of the NYPD.  You’re under arrest, Iron Man!”_  
_  
“On what charges?”_   Tony asked.  
_  
“Violating a restraining order, and you just added resisting arrest!  Don’t make that list longer-!”  
  
“Okay, first, I was three hundred and FOUR yards from the fence, and second somebody’s trying to get your guys killed, and it ain’t me.”  
  
“Kkrc–What’s -that- supposed to mean?”_  Lt. Grady demanded.  _“-Are you making a threat?”_  
_  
“NO.  I don’t shoot cops, Grady.  You know it and I know it, but if I hadn’t taken off when I did, somebody probably would have caught a ricochet.  Now who sent you out here to make the evening news, huh?”  
  
“Don’t sugar-coat it son, you -ran-,” _Lt. Grady snapped.  
_  
“Hang on a second-”_  
  
Tony left his right-hand radio on the police band, and re-tuned his left one.  
_  
“Kcc- -Iron Man to War Machine.  Do you know your boss just called the cops on me out here?”_ Tony demanded, angrily.  
_  
“-Excuse me?”_  War Machine replied, after a pause.  
_  
“I’m ten thousand feet straight up from the spot where you last saw me, and there are some very confused cops on the ground.  Can you come tell them its take-your-nemesis-to-work day?”_ Tony requested.  
_  
“Has anyone been hurt?”_   War Machine asked, quickly.  
_  
“Of course not, I took off.”  
  
“I’ll be right th- -Sir, he-”_ War Machine’s protest was cut off in midsentense, and his transmission vanished.  
_  
“-War Machine?”_  Tony blinked,  _“kckk- -War Machine, come in!”_  
  
Nothing.  
  
“Terrific.  Okay, umm…” he re-tuned his right radio, and tried again,  _“kck- -Iron Man to Cap.”_  
  
Nothing.  
_  
“-Iron Man to Captain America, do you read me?”_  Tony repeated, with increasing unease.  
_  
“Cap here,”_  Steve replied, sounding worried.  
_  
“I’m outside the SI compound.  Somebody called the cops on me, and I just lost contact with War Machine.  He’s inside.”  
  
“Casualties?” _ Steve asked.  
_  
“None out here, but I don’t know if WaAAH!- CHRIST!”_ Tony broke off with a yell, firing his jetboots at full power and zigzagging upwards in an evasive maneuver.    
  
He could smell the oily chemical tang of the insulation foam of his armor overheating, and the points where metal touched his skin felt like they’d been left out for an afternoon under the Saharan sun.  
_  
“Iron Man?!”  
  
“Sonofa- -I- -I’m okay,” _Tony breathed, as the speed of his flight flash-cooled his armor plates,  _“-microwave beam, I’m above it now.  Think it was fired from the roof of the SI compound.  According to the script, I’m supposed to attack the building now…”_  
_  
“Get out of there,”_ Steve ordered, _“-we’re on our way.”_  
_  
“Roger -that-,”_ Tony assured him, flying up and behind a massed cloudbank to the east.  
_  
“Iron Man, can you read me?”_ War Machine asked, as if he’d been repeating the question for some time.  
_  
“Where the hell have you been?”_ Tony demanded.   _“-Did you get attacked too?”_  
_  
“I did not.  I was passing through a shielded part of the facility.  What’s your current status?”_  War Machine replied.  
_  
“You better call Cap, -now-.  You and your bosses have a lot of explaining to do, starting with why ONE of you just tried to MICROWAVE me!”_ Tony snarled.   
_  
“…Acknowledged.”_  
  
The steel Avenger’s distorted voice seemed to pause strangely on the word, though whether it was from shock or simply choked with anger Tony couldn’t tell.  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 9:37 PM (same day).  
  
  
“-Substandard equipment heat malfunction, huh?”  Tony fumed.    
  
He took out the last retaining screw on one of his arm-guards, and slid the complex workings of the inner sleeve clear of the contoured, red-painted outer cylinder with a hard clank,  “-bet he knows all about ‘substandard equipment malfunction’…”  he set the outer armor sleeve down in it’s place on the plastic-sheeted floor beside him.  
  
The clear plastic sheets were practically made-to-order for this.  Technically they’d been covering an order of furniture to his right when he’d walked in the door, but they made great drop cloths, and the one taped around the table Tony had simply left on.  Now an intricate and regular pattern of disassembled parts had spread onto three such drop cloths surrounding the base of the table, and the best part was, he could just pick up all the plastic corners and -run- if he had to.  
The furniture was good too.  Tony detected Jan’s hand in that.  
He spotted another patch of partially coalesced wiring insulation up near the wrist cuff, and swore, fluently.  
  
“-That goddamn hack…”  Tony sighed, jotting down the wiring information on the back of a flyer that had come with the furniture.  “-Why couldn’t he just leave well enough alone… …tried to fucking kill me…  …microwave the wax out of his pointy little mustache…  …lazy turd…”    
  
He set the inner armor sleeve down on the drop cloth to his left, and lifted the chestplate up onto the table with a muffled clang.  
  
“Morgan…  -oh who am I kidding, this has the Queen of the Goths written all over it…  Hm.  Wonder if Sunset’s made a play for War Machine by now?”  
  
Flush-mounting hex bolts on the outside edge, and a handful of internal-wrenching camlocks underneath.   
  
“Bet he’s got more taste…”  
  
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen…  
  
“Cog-chasing slut…”  
  
The inner layer of the chestplate came apart in eight different puzzle-like sections that had always reminded him of a tortoise shell.  He pulled the two canon plugs for the inner LTF panel out of their protective recesses, and unscrewed them.   
  
“Dodged the bullet on that one…”  Tony snorted, “-no empire is worth  _her._..”  
  
Electrical connector plugs disconnected, he hit the mesh framework of the LTF panel with the heel of his hand, just above the edge of the insulation foam.   
  
“Can’t even remember to tell the chauffer to take her kid straight home from school when there’s a SWAT team all over the company lawn…”  Tony scowled.  
  
Knocked loose, the panel slid free easily enough with a brief screech of steel.  
  
“Poor kid…  Even her own lackey thought that move was déclassé…”  
  
Tony set the LTF panel down on the table some distance away, and began disconnecting the CTF panel right next to hole from the first one.  
  
“Hot chauffer, though…” he mused, “-wonder how Morgan got -that- hire past her holiness…”   
  
More tools would be nice.  He could have asked War Machine.  No, no way in hell, it would be an insult if that question succeeded.  Hell, the tools would probably be bugged.  He would have to microwave them to be sure.  Probably kill the microwave, and oh yeah, Steve didn’t plan on getting one.  What if microwaving didn’t do the trick?  What kind of metal circuitry would survive being -  Crystal.  Crystal grown or glass poured around breadboard-style conductive pathway striping… like a clear breadboard.  …A circuit that was designed to melt while in use.  God, what would the  _conductivity_  of molten metal be?  Perfect unbroken contact.  Have to shield it.  Gel.  Gel from one of those heat/cold packs?  Those were -designed- to be heated, and the outer interface wires would produce the necessary-  
  
The door opened, but it had opened for someone who had a key, and that light, almost casual booted tread was unmistakably Steve’s.  Tony kept sketching out the details of his invention- -inventions, now- on the open space left on the back of the flyer.  
  
“Saving the world?”  Steve asked, leaning a hand against the table.    
  
He was wearing his tan trench coat unbuttoned over his costume, and he looked tired in a way that would have been difficult for a stranger to see.    
  
“Melting microchips,” Tony replied, without looking up.  
  
“-Right,” Steve placed a small kiss against the side of Tony’s neck just because he could, then walked past him towards the kitchen.  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 2:51 AM (next day).  
  
  
Steve mumbled something in his sleep, and twitched uneasily.  
Tony finished fitting the end of a wire into the connector plug he was rebuilding, and put it down.  Steve had pulled the mattress out of the furniture huddle earlier, and fallen asleep on it without putting the bed frame together.  His dreams seemed to have darkened since then, however…  
The trouble was, Steve Rogers was almost as much of a ‘living weapon’ as Danny Rand.  Tony’s usual method of waking Steve up from a nightmare involved throwing a pillow at him from a distance, but…  Huh.  They did need a lot of basic things for this place.  He’d have to look into that later.  
Tony took his thermal shirt off, and flicked it at Steve’s knee.  More twitching, muttered words Tony couldn’t catch.  He tried it again.  
  
“Aaah!”  Steve did a quick and improbable twist of his body, grabbed empty air where the shirt had been a moment earlier- and woke up.    
  
He looked over at Tony and the dangling shirt, then shut his eyes and sighed.  Tony came closer and sat down on the side of the mattress.  
  
“…You okay?”  He asked, after a long moment.  
  
Steve took a steadying breath.  
  
“The- Red Skull was attacking my basic training barracks.  Gas attack.  Only- -there was a different Platoon there than the one I trained with, and Bucky and Peter’s friend Harry were in it.  There was yellow smoke everywhere, and- Tony, they hadn’t been issued gas masks yet.  They wouldn’t have known what to -do- with them, except for Bucky, and he didn’t…”  
  
Tony put a hand on the middle of Steve’s back, and left it there.  He didn’t talk.  
  
“I had a gas mask though,” Steve continued, his voice tight, “-I thought if I fought the Skull- gave Bucky a chance to get the others clear… but the Red Skull had chained the doors from the outside, and I-I didn’t know- and it got quiet.  I thought they must have made it out, but then I stepped back and tripped over a body- his eyes were still open- and then I saw more…”  
  
“Hey-” Tony shook him gently, “…didn’t happen, right?”  
  
“-You’re right,” Steve said after a moment, collecting himself.  
  
Tony frowned uncomfortably.  That hadn’t been what he was trying to say at all.  
  
“I…”  Tony broke off, and swore.  “…D-6,” he added, quietly.  
  
Steve’s half-asleep mind took a moment to translate that, but he’d memorized the jukebox’s playlist codes months ago, and D-6 was _‘The Ghost Song’_ , by  _The Doors_.  
Steve turned, gathered Tony up in a hug, and spoke softly but clearly.  
  
“Awake.  
Shake dreams from your hair  
My pretty child, my sweet one.  
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day  
The day’s divinity  
First thing you see…”  
  
Tony waited for a few moments.  
  
“-I love how you _stop_  there…”  He smirked, finally.  
  
“You were waiting for the part about couples racing naked on the beach?”  Steve asked.  
  
“Well- -yes.  But I think you got my point,” Tony admitted.  
  
“Loud and clear, Captain.”  Steve said, and put his chin down on Tony’s shoulder.  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 6:48 AM (same day).  
  
  
Peter came in with an irregularly crumpled brown paper grocery bag in his arms.  There was a fibrous sheen across one mangled corner that suggested it had been discreetly repaired with web.  
  
“You got them?”  Tony asked, getting up quickly.  He was unshaven, and wearing the same green fatigue pants and oatmeal-colored thermal shirt he’d had on the day before.    
  
“Right, here, boss.”  
  
“Bless you.  Gimmie,” Tony reached for the bag.  
  
“There is a matter of payment where payment is due…”  Peter reminded him.  
  
Tony muttered under his breath, and dug a five and a ten out of his wallet, handing them over.  The bag changed hands.  Tony reached in, retrieved a smaller paper bag sealed with masking tape, and ripped the top off of it without ceremony.  He began matching the new electrical connector plugs inside to a series of unmarked wire bundles laid out as if for some occult ritual on the plastic drop cloth to his left.  
  
“T-8687… T-85….”  
  
“You look busy,” Peter decided, “-I’m going to help myself to breakfast.  Do you mind?”  
  
“No, go ahead,” Tony replied, “-T-109… T-45…  T-45B…”  
  
Some time later, he heard a sizzle as butter met pan.  Tony looked up, his face perfectly blank.  
  
“-What?”  Peter asked, “-I’m making eggs.”  
  
“Nothing,” Tony blinked, “-continue.”  -He returned to his wiring.  
  
A short time later, he caught a scent.  
  
“-Is that cheese?”  Tony asked.  
  
“Yes, why?”  
  
“No, no, no, you put the cheese in -later-…”  Tony objected.  
  
“Well, it’s working,” Peter countered.  
  
“Fine.  Whatever,” Tony plugged in the soldering iron, and threaded the wiring in another connector while it came up to temperature.  
  
He heard the slight grind of a can opener, looked up to see Peter opening a can of stewed tomatoes, and gave up.  
Whatever it was, Peter ate quickly and left.  
When he got up three hours later to refresh his cup of coffee, Tony glanced into the pan out of morbid curiosity.  There was some left…  
Eggs and tomatoes, how very British.  Jarvis would have approved.  
Weird.  
Tony glanced out the windows consciously, then picked up a piece of the concoction in his fingers, and tried it.  
Oh yeah.  Peter had definitely mistaken the melting cheese for runny egg and let things cook too long, but…  overall…  could have turned out a lot worse.  Tony finished the leftovers with four quick sweeps of his fingers, and returned to the table, coffee cup in hand.  
  
-  
  
Indoor shopping mall, Soho, NYC.  1:29 PM (same day).  
  
  
Chuck Easton had been on shift for four and a half hours when he got the call.  He’d seen a lot in his tenure as a security guard there, and he was prepared for thieves, punks, tweakers, lost children, vagrants, irate customers, and the occasional gang-member…  
It was to his credit therefore, that he stood his ground, feet apart and gun held firmly in both hands with barely a tremble… with the Green Goblin bearing down on him.  
The Goblin flew through the mall like some untimely Halloween specter, swooping between the height of the upper and lower floors through the open air of the mezzanine as shoppers on both levels screamed around him.  He sliced through a hanging ‘thanksgiving day sale’ banner, angling the glider so that one of the razor-sharp front fairings parted the cable from which it hung with a sharp twang.  The ends of the cable snapped apart with the violence of thin steel whips, lashing against the sides of the upper mezzanine as the banner fell, and the Green Goblin’s pace hadn’t even slowed.    
The Goblin laughed insanely, laughed somehow over the entire mall’s PA system, and reached eagerly into the orange bag held open in his left fist.    
  
Easton’s world narrowed to just that hard, demonically leering visage as the Green Goblin’s purple-gloved hand drew back with a pumpkin bomb held high, and he fired.  
Five times his gun kicked in his hands, the sound of each shot clear and louder than anything else in his ears.  As his finger was tightening around the trigger a sixth time, Easton was hit with a flying tackle from the side and his shot went wide, passing through the coat-sleeve of a fleeing shopper and plowing into the wall beyond.  
An explosion rocked the mall from where Easton had been standing a moment earlier, and threw him and his rescuer skidding across the smooth-polished floor.  
  
“Are you crazy?!”  Richards, one of the other mall cops yelled in Easton’s face.  Richards’s skin was red with the exertion of running for the tackle, and his sad comb-over was sticking up at a forty-five degree angle.  “Quit trying to be a hero and RUN you idiot!”  
  
“-Did I get him?”  Easton asked, blearily.  
  
“No, you didn’t do diddly!  Now come ON!”  
  
Together they staggered up, and ran for the exit through a pale haze of shattered marble like everyone else.  Loud over the sound of the blaring building alarms, the Green Goblin was still laughing.  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 1:34 PM (same day).  
  
  
_“Cap to Iron Man!-krrc-”_  
  
Tony grabbed his recently-reassembled helmet off the floor, and keyed the mic.  
_  
“Ckkk-Iron Man here.”_  
_  
“The Green Goblin’s attacking the indoor mall in Soho,”_ Steve told him shortly,  _“-what’s your ETA?”  
  
“I- -give me fifteen minutes,” _Tony replied quickly.    
_  
“Roger that.  Cap out.”_  
  
Tony let go of the radio button, and seized his screwdriver.  
  
-  
  
Outside the mall, 1:35 PM (same day).  
  
  
War Machine angled in for a touch-down beside the entrance to the mall, and noticed something strange on his radar.  Lots of blips converging in on his position, that was to be expected…  but also two moving away terribly, terribly fast.  And with Iron Man down for maintenance and Warbird within sight and coming in -towards- him, there were only two players left in this game that could -move- that fast.  
War Machine took off in a new direction, pushing his bootjets to the very outer edge of their range.  
If his targets just kept jinking around like that…  
  
-  
  
Peter saw War Machine brake and streak off, and -almost- followed him without thinking about it.    
War Machine was a good guy.  Supposedly.  But he bird-dogged the Midnight Racer, and if what Luke had learned about the fire at the Goblin’s hideout had been correct, the Racer  _was_  the- -oh, the heck with it…  
Peter flung out a web-line and followed the heavily armed Avenger anyway.  
_  
“Spider-Man to Cap, War Machine’s bugging out!”_ Peter reported urgently, over the secure channel,  _“-did you tell him to do that?”  
  
“Krcc- -around the back.  GO.  -Say again, Spider?”_  
_  
“War Machine.  He took one look at the mall parking lot, and -bolted-.  I’m on ‘im, but he’s faster than me…”_ Peter explained.  
  
There was a long moment of dead air, and when Steve’s voice returned, it sounded a shade harder.   
_  
“No, and he’s not answering his radio.  Break contact and get to the highest vantage point you can.  Try and see what War Machine’s chasing, or what point he’s making for,”_ Steve ordered.  
_  
“-On it.”_  
  
Peter threw a new line, yanked back on it, and let go as soon as he had enough forward momentum.  He webbed a second line around a flagpole on a hotel, and rode the stretching, clear thread upwards before letting go near the top of the arc, gaining twelve stories.  
  
-  
  
Inside the mall, 1:38 PM (same day).  
  
  
The halls were choked with dust from the explosions, and a fire had started somewhere, adding the futuristic tang of burnt plastic to the scent of war Steve knew all too well.  
The Avengers were moving through the reek in pairs, searching.  Wanda and Pietro spoke in his ear, unseen.  Warbird was a shadow against the skylights above, on her own outside.  
At Steve’s side, Thor moved with an air of quiet competence, as befitted a slayer of giants.  In the stories often he’d told, there had been other fumes, other mists…  
Unlike the frost giants however, the Green Goblin had a reputation for taking hostages… temporarily.  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 1:39 PM (same day).  
  
  
_“Ckcc- -Iron Man to Spider man.”_  
_  
“Um.  Yes?”_ Peter replied, surprised.  
_  
“Talk to me.  Tell me what you see,”_  Tony instructed.    
_  
“Krrk- -Okay… I’m fifty five stories up, and I’m watching a battle way uptown.  Three fliers.  One of them is War Machine, and the other two -both- move like the Green Goblin, but I’m pretty sure one of them is the Midnight Racer.  Because they can’t both be the Goblin, especially since the Avengers have been playing tag with the Green Goblin in the mall.  So there could be three, actually…”_ Peter trailed off.  
_  
“Has anyone gotten a hold of War Machine yet?”_   Tony asked, finishing a line of screws on the back of his chestplate and flipping it over.  
_  
“No.”  
  
“Hrm,” _Tony frowned thoughtfully.  He was working with his helmet on, faceplate pushed up.  _“-Who’s fighting who, in the aerial battle?”_  
_  
“That is a very good question.  I’m not sure.  I mean, it looked like War Machine and one of the others against the third in the beginning, and then it was the two glider-guys against War Machine, and then one of the probably-glider-guys clipped the other, and then War Machine magic-missiled him-”_  
_  
“Ckcc- -Spider-”_ Tony began, warningly.  
_  
“-Unibeamed-, I mean.  Anyway-  …whoa, um… Boss?  They’re headed back this way…?”  
  
“Where are they now?” _ Tony asked, threading the magnetic coupling of his wrist-seal together with a quick, practiced spin.  
_  
“Over the North end of Central Park, I think…”_  Peter replied, as if he was leaning off the side of the building and squinting.  
_  
“You’ve got your other channel on the Avengers frequency, right?  What’s been going on inside the mall?”_ Tony prompted, briskly.  
_  
“Quicksilver is knocked out, but they think he’ll be okay.  Wanda hexed the Goblin’s glider out of action, and they’ve got him pinned down in the food court, but he has two hostages,”_  Peter related.  
_  
“Okay, where are the fliers now?”_  Tony asked.  
_  
“South end of the Park.  Wait- -they’re going west- -hang, on-”_ Peter’s channel went silent for sixteen agonizing seconds.  _“-Yeah,”_  he began when he came back on,  _“-they turned off into- -looks like Hell’s Kitchen.  Oh, ouch!  I hope the top story of that building was empty…”  
  
“Keep talking,” _Tony instructed, reaching for the last panel.  
  
-  
  
Inside the mall/Steve’s loft, 1:45 PM (same day).  
  
  
_“Krkk- -Iron Man to Cap.”  
  
“-Go ahead,”_ Steve said, touching the base of his left wing.  
_  
“What’s your status?”_  Tony asked.  
_  
“We’ve got one of the hostages back, but I can’t talk long.”  
  
“Can you use me?”  
  
“No.  Find War Machine,” _Steve ordered.  
_  
“…And do what?”_ Tony asked, carefully.  
_  
“Crcck- -Tell me who he’s fighting, and back him up if you can do so in good conscience,”_ Steve replied.  
_  
“…ETA forty five seconds,”_ Tony promised, as the magnetic seals of his armor locked around him with a rippling clank.    
  
He slapped his faceplate down, and launched out the window.   
  
-  
  
 Hell’s Kitchen, 1:45 PM (same day).  
  
  
For the first time, the Midnight Racer’s black leathers held a splash of color.   
It was a long red slash, running from a hands’ breadth to the right of the center of his chest, to the outer edge of his right shoulder.  Blood didn’t show up well against black leather.  It absorbed, spread, and slid off with the wind shear of his movements.  
The line showed when the Racer moved though, cut leather flexing open and he leaned into the air in from of him, and braked, body twisting with near-unbelievable speed as he turned, braked, leaned sideways, cut right angles against the walls of buildings, pushed over the top, anything to stay one step ahead.  
War Machine was having a hell of a time not catching the Midnight Racer in his line of fire.  The Green Goblin was worse, though.  Targeting solution after targeting solution failed with a nugatory red blink as the villain flew, evaded, -played- him.  
Hunting and being hunted, pursuing and controlling the chase with contemptuous ease, the Goblin kept -just- out of range, intent on taking the Midnight Racer apart, slice by slice…  
A friend for an eye, a block for a building… but blood for blood was a theme that just couldn’t be improved upon…  
  
-  
  
Tony had seen enough.  
He fired an electromagnet on a high-tensile tow cable from a launcher hidden in the plating on his right forearm.  The magnet stuck, nearly making the Goblin’s glider crash into the side of a brick chimneystack.  The Goblin whipped something that flashed silver out of his billowing purple sleeve, and sliced the steel cable, freeing himself.  Without pausing, the villain backhanded the bat-like shriuken in the Midnight Racer’s direction.  It cut low, spinning with a force that had to be more than the simple force of the throw, and sliced a shallow line across the back of the Racer’s left calf, sending him temporarily off course.  
Behind his faceplate, Tony’s mouth tightened.  
Two armored targets attacking, one soft target running, and this Goblin had -still- attacked the one target he could blood easily.  
_  
“Crk- -Iron Man to Cap,”_  Tony said, deadly calm as he tracked the Goblin through a hairpin turn.      
_  
“-Cap here,”_ Steve replied in his earpiece.  
_  
“I’ve got the real Green Goblin in front of me.  -Hell’s Kitchen.”_  
_  
“That explains Paulie,”_ Steve replied shortly, _“-I’m sending Warbird ahead.  We’ll be there soon.”  
  
“-Rodge.”_  
  
1:46 PM.  
The Green Goblin wasn’t liking the way the odds were shifting.  He WANTED the Midnight Racer.  He wanted him dead in so many ways.  That sneaking, thieving, indecisive, no talent  _amateur_ had cost him more than just his warehouse hideout.  He’d cost him…  
He’d fucking MISSED!  
True, Spider-man was probably behind this -somehow-… but the Racer had tricked him, had made him take revenge on the wrong people -first-, like a fool…  
And now he had the Iron dogs of war on his tail, and the Racer was right in front of him-  
But oh-  
Oh, he could use this…  
The tools following him didn’t know who the Midnight Racer was, but if they thought like the Avengers usually did, that wouldn’t even -matter-.  
He would leave such a mark here… such a stain on the pavement of their minds that would never wash clean.  
He cornered the Racer against the side of a building, taking a brief chance, but War Machine missed, his reversed hand repulsors tearing out the re-bar in the wall behind the Goblin, narrowly missing-  
The Midnight Racer arced straight up along the wall, one step ahead of the Green Goblin, and finally mis-judged the physics.  Wishing alone wouldn’t stop gravity, and it was such a fine detail, so easy to forget with graphic, grisly death a fraction of a second behind him…  
The Racer fell.  
Straight down off his rocketing hover-board, and straight into the arms of the Green Goblin.  
  
1:46 ½ PM.  
Tony saw the Midnight Racer fall, and it was nothing like slow motion.  It was cancelled inertia, a moment when time stood still, then engaged again with all the subtlety and grace of an igniting afterburner.  The Green Goblin grabbed sky, and Tony went after him, and the Goblin whipped out another of his bat like blades, ripped the face-shield off of the Midnight Racer’s black motorcycle helmet, and-  
-stopped, stunned, and let go.  
Tony hit the Green Goblin and knocked him off his glider, slamming the villain upwards thirty feet above the skyline and catching him by the back of his tattered purple tunic…  
The blow shouldn’t have finished him, yet somehow it had.  
The Green Goblin hung insensible in the grip of Tony’s gauntlet, and after a long moment, Tony realized that the man wasn’t faking.  
War Machine rose in front of him silently, the Midnight Racer cradled in his arms like a broken toy.  
  
Iron Man and War Machine regarded each other for a long, tense moment.  
Tony glanced down first, and through the hole where the Racer’s tinted visor had been, he recognized the face of Peter’s friend Harry Osborne.  
He couldn’t process that just yet.  
  
“I believe this is yours sir,” War Machine told him, “-may I propose a trade?”  
  
Tony looked down at the Green Goblin.  He still half expected the villain to wake up and began fighting again…  
But…  the Goblin was truly gone, even if the man was breathing.  
Tony reached behind the Green Goblin’s point-eared metal mask, and felt the scratch of a catch.  He pressed it, and removed the mask, letting the monstrosity fall to the cracked pavement far below.  
  
“Oh,  _Jesus_ …”  Tony swore, looking into the slack face of Norman Osborne.  
  
War Machine waited, silent.  
  
Tony’s radar beeped as it picked up a new blip from the southeast, probably Warbird.  
  
“You were following the Racer to get to Norman, weren’t you,” Tony stated.  
  
“Yes,” War Machine replied.  
  
“-Why?”  Tony asked, flatly.  
  
“Because SHIELD takes care of its own, one way or another,” War Machine told him.  
  
Tony was silent for a long moment, looking first at War Machine’s dark eye-slits, and then at the unconscious confusion on Harry’s face.  He was almost awake now…  
  
“-Deal,” Tony said shortly, and offered War Machine the Green Goblin at arm’s length.  
  
-  
  
St. Vincent’s Hospital, NYC, 2:23 PM (same day).  
    
  
Peter came into the room with his ‘Fantastic Four’ t-shirt on inside out.  
Tony looked up, the shadows beneath his eyes from the night before somehow having deepened.  
Harry lay in the trimly made bed between them, looking pale and unconscious.  
  
“How is he?”  Peter asked, without prelude.  
  
“He’s-” Tony paused, swallowed.  “-He’s probably going to be okay, but they’re not sure what the Goblin did to him.  There’s something in his system that-” Tony broke off, and looked Peter in the eyes, “-do you have any idea what that might be?”  
  
“No.  I swear,” Peter promised.  “-Is it that thing you found at the burned-“  
  
“-Yeah,” Tony cut him off, “…probably.”  
  
“…Has anybody called his dad yet?”  Peter asked, worried.  
  
“Yeah.  But uh… SHIELD hasn’t gotten back to them yet,” Tony replied, too-carefully.   
  
A silence fell, and Peter came around to Tony’s side of the bed.  
Peter took Harry’s left hand in both of his, and though he didn’t waken, Harry’s fingers closed slightly.  
The steady beat of the heart monitor was the only sound in the room.

-


	8. Chapter 8

-

St. Vincent’s Hospital, NYC, 3:08 PM.  
  
  
The coffee machine was not working.  
It was basically a glorified vending machine incapable of dispensing any beverage worth paying for anyway, but it was failing at even -that- simple task.   It would humm, make promising clicks, and- -drip ineffectively.    
Tony gave the machine an exasperated look, and sighed through his nose.  
He couldn’t go back in that room just yet.  Harry was still sedated from the stitch job he’d gotten earlier, and the weight of Peter’s waking silence was even worse.  
  
Twenty one stitches on his chest and upper arm alone.  Was that lucky or unlucky?  Either way, it would leave one hell of a scar.  Chest-wounds did.  It was less a matter of flexion than it was one of overall tension.  To move, to breathe, to turn at the waist or lift an arm, all these things pulled at the skin, if not the muscles, of the chest.  
Harry would learn that.  
Harry would learn so many… many things that Tony would have preferred he hadn’t.  
And there was not a damn thing either of them could do to change that now.  
This coffee machine, however…  
  
Tony sighed, and glanced up and down the hallway.    
He reached into the main compartment of his hockey bag, barely unzipping it, and found the tool kit inside the belt-plate of his armor by feel.  
Two minutes later he had the machine open, and had tracked the problem down to a clogged freshwater intake line.  Lime scale in a water pipe somewhere between here and the water tower on the roof, probably.  Tony shut off the main water valve, cleared the line, turned the water valve back on, grabbed a quarter to replace the one he’d put in earlier, and closed the machine up.  
Dutifully, it brewed him a Styrofoam cup of singed-smelling coffee.  
Tony put his tools back, and zipped the bag shut.  It clanked slightly as he slung it back over his shoulder, and he glanced around self-consciously.  
Nobody was looking at him though.  Those who had noticed his presence in the hallway at all had just seen him repair the coffee machine, so he was a worker, and therefore invisible.  
  
Which… was a good thing in hindsight, because getting caught breaking into a coffee machine while holding a large hockey bag containing Iron Man’s armor and the Midnight Racer’s helmet and hoverboard would have been…    
Tony broke momentarily into a cold sweat, took his cup of coffee from under the spout, and walked away as unobtrusively as possible.   
He made it to just outside the door of Harry’s room, and leaned back against the wall, shoulders slumped.  Tony tried the coffee.  It tasted better than it smelled, but not by much.    
Through the door, he could hear Harry and Peter talking.  
Tony drank his coffee, and waited until he could hold the liquid in the cup steady before going in.  
  
-  
  
Harry heard the door open, and looked up too quickly.  The world slid back and sideways a little.  Harry did his best to ignore that and blinked, wondering just how badly injured he was, under the drugs.  
Tony came in looking tense and annoyed, and closed the door behind him.  Then he searched the entire room as if checking for cockroaches.  
  
“-What…?”  Harry asked, craning his neck.  
  
“It’s cool, don’t worry about it,” Peter assured him.  
  
“M’kay…”  Harry frowned, doubtfully.  
  
Tony unzipped his large black and white duffel bag and fiddled with what sounded like a machine without taking it out of the bag.  Colored lights played along his forearms briefly.  Then he shut the device off, and zipped the bag shut.  
Tony dropped into a chair at the foot of the bed and sighed, running a hand back through his hair.  He looked at Harry and Peter for a long moment without speaking.  
Then he shot Peter a significant glance, and flicked a quarter-inch steel nut at Harry’s forehead, fast.  
Peter flinched with the effort of not catching it.  
Harry -did- catch it, a difficult catch for someone with normal reflexes, and partially sedated it should have been flat-out impossible.  
Tony wasn’t watching the boy’s hands though.  He was watching Harry’s expressive eyes.  First they widened in shock, then narrowed as the pain of the movement registered, painkillers or no.  There was consternation, the wounded fear of a kicked puppy, maybe a shadow of guilt…  
But no flicker.  
No essential change, deadly glance, or brief emotion that didn’t match the rest.  
-Harry had a chance, then.  
  
“Ah!”  Harry gasped, doubling forward with a wince.  
  
“Harry-!”  Peter began, worried.  
  
“Relax.  I won’t throw anything else,” Tony promised.  
  
“What- -the  _hell_ _?_ ”  Harry managed, looking up at Tony with a hurt expression.  
  
“Just checking to see who I was talking to,” Tony told him, calmly.  
  
Harry looked confused for a moment, then caught his breath.  He glanced over at Peter quickly.  
  
“I know you’re the Midnight Racer, its cool, and you’re an idiot for not telling me,” Peter listed, answering some of Harry’s unspoken questions.  
  
Harry let out the breath, and gave Peter a very unguarded and grateful smile.  
  
“ _Cool?_ ”  Tony echoed, “-after this afternoon, you’re lucky you’re still  _breathing_ …”  
  
A nurse opened the door quickly, without knocking, and paused.  
Harry and Tony looked up, equally surprised.  Peter, whose Spider-sense had given him a second longer to think about it, looked over at the heart monitor.  
The nurse glanced sternly at Peter and Tony, and picked up Harry’s chart, double checking something.    
  
“You have a -very- high morphine tolerance,” she stated, looking at Harry hard.  
  
Harry started to shrug, broke off as the first preparatory tensing flared across the nerves of his chest, and settled for an apologetic smile.  
  
“-Do I?”  
  
“Yes, you  _do_ ,” she told him, more worried than reproving, “-and telling me what drugs you’ve been doing and how much would make figuring out your medication a lot safer.  -Please.”  
  
“Well- I tried acid this summer…”  Harry replied helpfully, without really thinking.  
  
“You WHAT?”  Peter exclaimed.  
  
“That shouldn’t-” The nurse frowned at Harry’s chart, “-how many times?  
  
“Just the once,” Harry replied quickly, more at Peter than the nurse.  
  
The nurse looked from Harry to Peter, and from Peter to Tony and his oddly lumpy hockey bag.  
  
“Okay, I think it’s time for the two of you to leave,” she decided, polite but firm.  
  
“They can come back tomorrow, right?”  Harry asked, concerned.  
  
“Yes, probably, but for now they have to leave,” the nurse told him.  
  
“-Feel better, okay?”  Peter called back to Harry as the nurse herded them towards the door.  
  
“Thanks, Pete-” Harry paused, then looked over at Tony.  “-Hey, can you guys see if you can find my car?  It’s parked not far from where I was.”  
  
“Black leather seats, right?”  Tony asked.  
  
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Harry agreed, meeting his eye.  
  
“I’ll take care of it,” Tony promised, adjusting the shoulder-strap of the hockey bag momentarily.  
  
“Right on.  I’ll see you guys later.”  
  
“See you, Harry.”  
  
“Bye-” Peter raised a hand.  
  
The nurse cleared her throat.  
  
“Okay, going now…”  Peter agreed, retreating.  
  
Harry smiled a little, and gathered his sharpening wits for what promised to be a very challenging Q&A session.  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 8:48 PM (same day).  
  
  
Steve came home to near darkness.  There was the light from outside… and a soft red glow that seemed to be coming from the window frames- -more of an impression than an usable light source.  Steve tensed, senses alert.  
A softly glowing yellow-white triangle appeared in the shadows off to his left, followed by the faint whirr of the armor powering back up.  
  
“You can actually  _see_  that, can’t you?”  Tony observed, skating over in full armor minus his helmet.  
  
“Can’t you?”  Steve asked, relaxing.  
  
“Nope.  I can see the glow of the Infa-red bulbs on the wall behind you, but that’s it,” Tony said, looking pleased.  
  
Steve took Tony’s gauntlet, and walked out into the center of the room, absently handing Tony around behind himself in a circle.  Looking back, he saw two small black boxes with glowing red bulbs spaced far apart on the wall, pointing so that their beams overlapped.  They looked bright enough up there, but the dull red light they cast didn’t seem to carry very well.  Steve caught Tony as he skated around again, and stopped him.  
  
“-Were you testing my senses just now?”  Steve asked.  
  
“No.  I put those up to over-expose the film of any camera that tries to take a picture of us through the windows,” Tony explained, “-there’s actually a UV component too… what color is the light you’re seeing?”  
  
“Just red, but it’s extremely faint,” Steve admitted.  
  
“Hmm.  Then it  _could_ be just the glow of the bulbs that I can see, magnified…”  Tony mused.    
  
“-How was Harry?”  Steve asked.  
  
“All stitched up, and acting a little giddy from medication that should have put him out cold for at least twelve hours,” Tony replied, frankly.  
  
“Oh brother…”  Steve pushed his cowl back, and rubbed his face with one hand.  
  
“Yeah, Harry’s going to need a cover story that doesn’t involve being a major drug addict, and I mean tomorrow  _morning_.  The good news is, SHIELD is trying to distance itself from any knowledge of the Goblin’s serum, and they know -I- know he’s been exposed, which means YOU know he’s been exposed, so there wouldn’t be any point in transferring him or making Harry ‘disappear’.  …See if you can get Norman’s notes about it from Fury anyway, though.”  
  
“I’ll do my best,” Steve promised, making a mental note to see what Hank Pym and Thor’s friend Dr. Blake thought of the case.    
  
That… would be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it?  
So why did the thought make him feel so uneasy?  
  
“I’ve been taking apart Harry’s hover-board,” Tony interrupted Steve’s train of thought without realizing it, “-and it’s fascinating.  I mean- -it’s a deathtrap that runs on ether-ethanol, but aside from that it looks a lot like the helical compression array I was working on for a hovercraft in freshman year.  -That’s what gives the board its speed.  I didn’t think to tune the helix for speed, because I’d made this bet that I could drive a Ferrari across the Charles River to Boston U., and I needed all the lift I could get to keep it off the surface of the water without the use of a-”  
  
“Tony?”  Steve interrupted him.  
  
“-Yes?”  Tony blinked.  
  
“When’s the last time you slept?”  
  
“Less than forty-eight hours ago.  Why do you ask?”  Tony asked.  
  
“You’re still wearing your armor,” Steve pointed out.  
  
“Oh, that was just to hang up the IR projectors,” Tony explained, “-I couldn’t reach, so I flew.”  
  
“Come take a shower with me?”  Steve asked, abandoning both logic and subtlety.  
  
“Okay, I could do that…”  Tony decided, easily.  
  
-  
  
Steve lay awake in the darkness, his thoughts drifting.  
Tony was out cold against Steve’s side, head heavy on his shoulder, dark hair drying flat on one side.  The muffled light of the re-synching arc reactor was nearly steady, but Steve left the plug where it was.  
Something was off.  Something… cyclical.  Historical.  Some widening gyre that he couldn’t quite grasp.  
War Machine had tracked down the Green Goblin behind his back, more in spite of being an Avenger than because of it…  
Harry was alive, but Harry was -only- alive due to an extraordinary combination of luck and coordination by both War Machine and Tony, apparently completely unscripted.  
War Machine was good.   _Too_  good, and now Steve knew that it was because the man was a SHIELD agent.  Or working for them.  Or… something.  
But War Machine’s obscure loyalties didn’t erase the fact that he’d succeeded in -finding- the Green Goblin, nor the fact that he’d probably saved Harry’s life that afternoon.  
…And what kind of deal could Morgan Stark have cut with  _Nick Fury_ in the first place?  
  
“-Mh,” Tony mumbled, without waking up.  
  
It was as good an answer as any of the rest he had gotten lately…  
Steve was extremely tired of making decisions with only half the information.  
He glanced down without moving, and stroked his thumb across the skin of Tony’s shoulder.  Tony sighed inaudibly and settled in again, more bonelessly than before, if such were possible.  He felt good there.  Relaxed, but solid.  
Steve folded his free arm up over his head, and shut his eyes.  
  
-  
  
St. Vincent’s Hospital, 8:02 AM (next day).  
  
  
Click.  
Harry woke up, and saw that the door was opening.  Good, that would be Peter and-  
  
“-MJ?”  Harry blinked, starting to smile.  
  
She was a contradiction, a bright flower in the middle of a film noire, shedding gloves and a long lavender scarf onto a nearby chair as she went.  
  
“Harry!”  Mary Jane wasn’t sure exactly where his injuries were, so she put a hand to either side of his face, and kissed him.  
  
“-Whoo.  Good morning…”  
  
“How are you feeling?”  MJ demanded, sitting sideways on the edge of the bed, smoothing the pleats of her skirt, and taking his hand.  
  
“Uh- -better  _now_ ,” Harry grinned.  
  
“Peter called me yesterday, but I didn’t get the message until I got home from rehearsal.”  
  
“It’s okay, I was pretty out of it…”  Harry admitted, mostly truthfully.  
  
“I didn’t see your dad out there- -was he hurt too, or is he…”  MJ broke off, but the words ‘just not coming’ hung in the air anyway.  
  
“My dad…”  Harry paused, and folded his fingers around hers, “-you know he designed the SHIELD gliders, right?”  
  
“Yes…?”  
  
“Well… when the Green Goblin was arrested yesterday, my dad found out that the Goblin had been using his technology to do all those horrible things, and he… kind of had a nervous breakdown at work.”  
  
“Oh, I’m so sorry…”  
  
“It’s- -probably for the best.  My dad’s been under a lot of pressure lately,” Harry said, not quite looking her in the eye.  
MJ didn’t argue that one.  
  
Through the door, Harry caught the sound of overlapping voices.  
  
“-Who’s out there?”  He asked.  
  
“Peter, Tony, Tony’s roommate Steve, and Aunt May.  -Oh, and there was a blonde lady in a suit here earlier, but she left,” MJ listed.  
  
“Mmm,” Harry agreed, thoughtfully.    
  
MJ waited for Harry to continue, but he didn’t.  It wasn’t fair of her, she -knew- that… Harry had been hurt badly on the edge of a superhero battle the day before, and this thing with his dad on top of it…  
Yet she couldn’t keep from comparing his vague, too-smooth responses to the ones she was more used to hearing from Peter.  
  
“Should I tell the others they can come in, then?”  MJ asked.  
  
“Yeah.  Hey-” Harry paused, retaining her hand for a moment.  
  
“Yes?”  MJ looked back.  
  
“I’m sorry about Tuesday, I just forgot.  I mean- -I just remembered…”  Harry fumbled.  
  
“You’re forgiven,” she smiled, and meant it.  MJ pressed his fingers with hers, then released his hand and went to open the door.  
  
-  
  
Avengers tower communications room, 9:56 AM (same day).  
  
  
Steve folded the computer printout of War Machine’s file back up, and frowned.  
The first appearance of the Stark Industries War Machine armor had been in 1967, about four months after Tony’s return to the United States.  
Tony had completed the Mark II Iron Man armor nearly a month and a half earlier, but in the press conference Morgan had held when he revealed War Machine’s existence, he claimed that an early version of the plans for the suit had been stolen from Stark Industries.  This had started an extremely cold-blooded conflict between Morgan and Tony that Tony officially lost in 1968, when Morgan was awarded all patents relevant to the War Machine armor.  
  
Tony won his own victory however, because while War Machine was the officially recognized version, Iron Man had been picked up by the wave of anti-establishment zeitgeist sweeping the city.  
Iron Man had apparently ripped off a major invention from a war-profiteering corporate giant, added cooler toys and a flashy red and yellow paint job, and turned what would have been the ultimate symbol of faceless establishment power into an apolitical force for good on the ground in New York City.  
War Machine had faded into the background as a retainer of Stark Industries, neither flashy in his style, nor much given to speechmaking.  He became a hero in his own right after thwarting an incident in London, almost to the surprise of his official employers… though they lost no time capitalizing on it.  Unlike Iron Man, War Machine often traveled outside the United States, acting as both bodyguard and implied threat.    
He’d occasionally been charged with property damage, and he’d put several people who had threatened his employers in the hospital, but War Machine had never been known to kill on purpose.  The darkest things on his record (officially, anyway) were the deaths of two known Maggia enforcers who had been standing near a heavy iron door when War Machine had repulsor-blasted it open.  Things like that, as Steve knew all too well, came with the territory.  
  
War Machine had a lot more territory to cover than he’d led Steve and the others to believe when they had nominated him as an Avenger, however.  
Tony’s design, Morgan’s (Sunset’s) money, and SHIELD’s information…  
No wonder War Machine had caught up with the Green Goblin first.  
  
-  
  
Steve heard the clank of heavy boots in the hall outside, and put War Machine’s file out of sight.  He steepled his fingers, and waited.  
A brief knock, metal on metal with a great deal of carefully-controlled power behind it.  
  
“Enter,” Steve called, without getting up.  
  
War Machine came in, walked up to the conference table as if it was a massive desk, and stopped.  He saluted, silently.  
Steve saluted him back solemnly, wondering for the first time just how many of the people who saluted him in this modern age did so simply to put him off his guard.  
He hated wondering about things like that.  
Saluting was a pure gesture, a sign of respect for the position, if not the man being saluted.  It was part of an essential tradition of customs and courtesies that kept men from becoming animals on the front lines, or at least helped them regain their sanity later.  It was a physical reminder that you were still in control of yourself, and that you were part of something bigger.  At worst it was a way of interacting with officers with whom you were barely on speaking terms without getting yourself court-martialed, and Steve had to wonder if that had anything to do with War Machine’s silence now…  
  
“You know, my identity as Captain America has often required me to deceive my commanding officers and NCOs in the past.  Not by directly lying you understand, but by pretending to be the laziest, cheekiest, most useless goldbrick in my platoon.  In short, by ensuring that the question ‘are you Captain America?’ would never enter their minds at all.  The times and the situation demanded it.  The  _war_ demanded it… and I can still peel a potato in under a minute,” Steve paused, wondering momentarily if War Machine’s armor had the same joint-locking feature that Tony’s did.  -He’d long suspected that the powersuiters abused this to keep from fidgeting.  
  
“-While you haven’t actually  _opposed_  the Avengers, you did keep your involvement with SHIELD from the rest of us in a deliberate and very underhanded manner, and you disobeyed my direct order to report sightings of either the Green Goblin -or- the Midnight Racer.  Worse still, you voluntarily cut off communication with the rest of the team at the start of an extremely dangerous battle so you could go off and play Lone Ranger against -two- other fliers, one of whom was our true target!  Mister, I had to find out that the Green Goblin we took down in the mall wasn’t the real one from _Iron Man_ , who isn’t even IN the Avengers…  You didn’t even give me _that_  much,” Steve took a breath.   
  
 “-Now then… the rest of the Avengers know damn well what you pulled because I had to divert Spider-man from helping -them- when you decided to take off.  What they don’t know is that you were working for SHIELD at the time, because Iron Man told me that part privately.  And that information will go no further unless you want it to.  The life of a SHIELD agent is short enough, from what I’ve seen.”  
  
“That is… appreciated,” War Machine rumbled.  
  
“ _However_.  I’ve got a boy in the hospital who’s barely old enough to vote, a civilian who should never have learned you were working for SHIELD in the first place, and a motion from Thor and Warbird on my desk to turn your suspension from the Avengers into a full dismissal.  And so help me, with the facts I have at present, I’d vote with them.  I’m sure your work for SHIELD is important, but I won’t allow you to ride shotgun with us while ignoring my orders.  It’s too dangerous.  The Avengers are a team, War Machine.”  
  
“…Are you asking for my resignation, sir?”  War Machine asked, after a pause.  
  
“I’m asking you to make a decision,”  Steve said flatly,  “-you can level with me about what your real commitments are and take your responsibilities as an Avenger seriously, or you can get out.”  
  
“…Understood,” War Machine nodded once.  
  
“Think it over, and give me your answer by ten AM tomorrow,” Steve ordered.  
  
“Will that be all?”  
  
“No.  Take your helmet off,” Steve decided.  
  
War Machine hesitated, as Steve had been almost certain he would.  
Then, reluctantly, he reached up and disengaged the locks at the base of his heavy gray helmet, lifting it off.  
War Machine’s helmet didn’t come off in one piece the way Tony’s did.  The shell of the helmet slid off of a kind of guard extending from his flexible neck-armor up to cover the very back of his head.  His face was fully visible though, competent, experienced, and a bit worried.  Steve didn’t recognize the man.    
…In hindsight, he’d been half expecting to see Dum-dum Dougan.  
  
“All right,” Steve nodded.  
  
War Machine replaced his helmet with a noise like the bolt of a rifle being drawn back, and a magnetic-sounding ‘chunkt’.    
  
“I will give you my answer as soon as I can,” he promised, and left.  
  
…Without saluting, Steve noted.  Either he’d finally managed to rattle the man, or it -had- been an affectation on War Machine’s part.    
  
Interesting.  
  
-  
  
The ruins of the Iron Horse Garage, 12:01 PM (same day).  
  
  
Tony turned up the collar of the army field jacket he’d gotten that morning, and crossed the street.  The name tapes on the jacket had said ‘Kroger’ before he’d removed them, carefully cutting each olive-colored stitch with the tip of an Xacto knife.    
It was his now, and it fit.  That was the important thing.  
The kids he had stopped to talk with as Iron Man a few minutes earlier had taken their bikes and left, and the lot where his garage had been stood empty.    
Tony paused just inside the low-walled enclosure of where the walls had been and exhaled, his breath visible in the chilly air.  
  
_“-I don’ feel cold,” Tony noted, snuggling against the front of Steve’s coat.  
“That’s because you’re drunk,” Steve told him dryly, “-but you’re standing in your underwear on a cold concrete floor, and its forty degrees out.”_  
  
He blinked, and walked up a mound of rain and bicycle-flattened gritty ash.  
He would be… eight feet from the corner of the tan filing cabinet, and fifteen from the front of the jukebox.  And eighteen inches up.  
Tony remembered hovering in the center of the garage after completing the Mark IV armor, feet together, palms downwards.  Even the faint vibration of flight had felt smoother, muffled by the new shock-padding.    
The jets themselves had been different too of course, the first generation he’d re-cast from the high-grade alloys of a crashed A.I.M. transport.  That had been a good capture, sunk in shallow water at the foot of a secluded cliff just upstate.  When he’d wanted more parts off the thing all he had to do was raise it with his repulsors…  Tony had used about a third of the metals over time, but then one day he’d gone back, and the wreck just hadn’t been there anymore.  
  
He stepped down off the mound, and walked up to a pile of brittle, crumbled cinderblock at the foot of the wall where his workbench had stood.  
Had it burned before the upper wall caved in, or after?  
White-hot flames.  Pale blue, and incandescent orange.  Glowing like the thin tungsten filament in a light bulb magnified a hundredfold.  Heat that would vaporize flesh almost as fast as it burned.  
How fast?  
How soon was it, before the string of red hole-punched Frisbees hung across the ceiling at the back of the garage began to melt, and stretch, and catch fire one by one, splashes of molten plastic vanishing in the hotter blaze below?  Had they deflected and begun to melt together first, or had they burned too fast?  
Peter’s photo-developing chemicals- -had he left them under the sink again, or had they been in the hazmat locker?  Photo paper…  
Photographs.  
Pictures of each motorcycle Steve had custom painted had been on this wall.  …Did Peter still have the negatives?    
_Probably._   He might have a -lot- of pictures stored that way, actually… it was a thing Tony had -known-, but…  now it  _mattered._  
  
One picture on that wall wouldn’t be coming back though.  
The one taken in Vietnam, of him and Rhodey in front of their UH-1D Huey, and those guys they’d flown out from Tan Son Nhut the day before.  The redhead second from the left- -what was his name again?- -had tucked a joint out of sight behind the gunny’s back while the picture was being taken.  
Rhodey.  A flash of white teeth in the shadows off to his left during night missions, and a deep, cool voice in his headset when things got hot.  Laughter, and bets won and lost, and something about taking an empty bottle to his copilot’s forehead when Rhodey brought up a subject he didn’t want to talk about one too many times, and being punched unconscious for it.  Long limbs, and flat, hard muscle that could stay still for hours if the story was good enough.  Hauling the man back from a knife-fight in a Saigon club, and feeling the dangerous pulse of rage under his hands.  The glint of the pipe in Rhodey’s hand, and himself yelling over his shoulder at the young Vietnamese man with the knife in his own language, hoping he’d gotten the phrasing right…  
Pulling up on the stick, and lifting them up out of the loud jungle into the pale coolness of a faint crosswind.  Screaming in the compartment aft, but dead, dying or violently alive they were all free now, the sky opening in front of them like the hazy blue of an oil painting… just so long as none of those guns they could still hear chattering in the canopy below got lucky.  
Swinging over Rhodey’s shoulder with the rhythm of his copilot’s stride, his head spinning… the paper lanterns of a festival from upside-down, a filthy dog that didn’t quite work up the courage to sniff him, a pretty girl with long black hair and an embroidered white jacket, now flirting with Rhodey, now asking him questions and laughing at his responses…  
  
Just another mission, and then the terrifying wrench of an impact, followed by the explosion, jerking the Huey right in midair so fast-  
How he’d gotten the beast down he still didn’t know.    
Rhodey’s window had been broken, and he’d been stunned by the blow, so still.  Tony had thought he was dead, at first…  Then Rhodey was up again, and the gunny was giving him his hand, and shouting.  The firing in the pale green field outside was coming closer, tell-tale ripples moving fast through the swaying tall stalks, like the dorsal-fins of converging sharks…  
Tony shut his eyes tight, and breathed in the cold air of a New York winter.  Shades of damp, and clean ocean air, and overlapping layers of car exhaust.    
He put out a hand and touched rough, scorched cinderblock.  Felt the cement in between crumble under his fingers, just a little.  
Tony opened his eyes to late 1972, and let out the breath he’d taken.  
It was good to be home.  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 4:33 PM (same day).  
  
  
“Wow.  That is -clean-,” Tony acknowledged, inspecting the damage to Misty Knight’s mechanical right arm.    
  
A long slash crossed her forearm diagonally where she’d raised it to ward off a sword-cut.  The blow had parted the tempered steel skin with barely a dent, severed a bundle of wiring underneath at an angle, and sheared through two mechanical linkages.    
  
“It should be.  He was using Colleen’s sword,” Misty told him.  
  
“Well…”  Tony thought about the tools he had at present, and tapped thoughtfully against the steel outer casing with the handle of a small screwdriver.  “-I can get you back up to about two hundred and fifty pounds of mechanical force, but it won’t be pretty.”  
  
“That’s what the glove is for,” Misty shrugged, philosophically.  “-It will still fit under that, right?  I brought my spare…”  
  
“Oh yeah, are you kidding me?”  Tony assured her, “-I just meant you’ll have to wait until I can fabricate things again for the fine work.  I can patch it up now, no problem.”    
  
“Thanks,” she smiled.  
  
“You’re welcome,”  he pressed the fingers of Misty’s right hand back further than looked natural, and Misty took over, holding them there while Tony undid a small locking screw at the base of her wrist.  
  
“…I hate watching you do that,” Misty admitted.  
  
“I know,” Tony smirked wryly, without looking up.    
  
He tapped the base of her wrist judiciously with the butt of the screwdriver, and dropped the screw that fell out into a small plastic bowl on the table in front of him.  Tony bent her wrist forwards ninety degrees, and undid a second, somewhat heavier screw now exposed along the back of her wrist.    
  
Misty’s catlike light brown eyes wandered over the rest of the loft.  The long rectangular room was now home to a scattering of brass and bronze-bodied lamps.  No two lamps were the same, but when taken together they all seemed to belong, gleaming dull gold against the smooth wooden floor, and contrasting with the deep red brick of the walls.  
The furniture in the room looked modern, and most of it was distributed logically along one side or the other, leaving a wide open space down the middle that reminded her of Danny’s workout room.  There was a large bed at the end of the room, standing a few feet away from the wall at an angle, as if waiting for the pile of cardboard boxes huddled there to move.  
Tony removed the second retaining screw, pulled Misty’s smooth metal hand out of the wrist-joint about half an inch, and twisted the whole assembly around a hundred and eighty degrees, exposing the electrical connectors.  
Misty sighed uncomfortably and looked away again, chin in hand.  
  
“It looks like you and Steve are really getting this place sorted out,” she observed.  
  
“Uh-huh,” Tony responded absently, tilting a gooseneck lamp closer to disconnect Misty’s tactile pressure feedback sensors.  
  
“You’ve been with him what, over a year now?”  She asked.  
  
Tony paused, and glanced up quickly before looking back down into the workings of her arm and nodding.  
  
“That’s big,” Misty acknowledged.  
  
“I know.”  Tony paused, detaching Misty’s artificial hand entirely, and pressing in the flat stud on the inner radial frame that unlocked her outer arm-casing.  “So… how much did you win?”  
  
“I didn’t bet,” Misty replied frankly, “-but Colleen won a hundred and fifty bucks.”  
  
“ _-Good,_ ” Tony decided, with a note of satisfaction.  
  
-  
  
Avengers Tower, upper living room, 6:23 PM (same day).  
  
  
War Machine waited, facing the floor to ceiling windows that ran the length of the entire west wall.  A number of couches and chairs were clumped stylishly in the room behind him, but as sturdy as they looked, they hadn’t been built with eight foot tall powersuits in mind.  The sun didn’t discriminate however, hanging low along the horizon beneath a magnificent pile of red-orange clouds.  
The elevator behind War Machine opened with a low chime, and Steve came in.  He was in costume, and the light from the window turned the white star across his chest a deep saffron color.  He stopped in front of the window beside War Machine, then reached up and pushed his cowl down.  Steve looked no less formidable unmasked, and the setting sun added shadows to the strong angles of his face, making him look older.  
  
“That,” he said, looking out over the skyline below, “-is a great city.”  
  
“Indeed,” War Machine agreed, in his mechanical rumble.  
  
“…Have you decided, then?”  Steve asked, looking into the shadowed eyeslits of War Machine’s helmet as though he could see through the rest of the metal as well now.  
  
“I have.  Or rather… I’ve defined the problem.”  
  
Steve waited, listening.  
  
“I  _am_ employed by Morgan and Sunset Stark, but I’m also there to keep an eye on them, and act as a deterrent to… mistakes.”  
  
“Until recently,” Steve observed.  
  
The sun dipped lower, casting the skyline into shadow and flame.  
  
“Yes,” War Machine told him candidly, “-your nomination of me was too tempting, on both fronts.  The Starks wanted the prestige, and to be rid of me, and SHIELD wanted a man inside the Avengers more than they needed one watching SI full time.”  
  
“Why tell me this now?”  Steve asked.  
  
“Because I have already failed SHIELD, critically.  I know as well as you do that the microwave beam fired from the roof of the SI complex at Iron Man was both deadly and real, but until that moment, I wasn’t aware it existed.”  War Machine paused for a moment, then continued, “-understand me Captain, I would stay an Avenger if I could.  But this is not the best time to leave Stark Industries without a watchdog, and as far as Colonel Fury is concerned, my mission here ended when I revealed my involvement with SHIELD to Iron Man to regain custody of Norman Osborne.”  
  
“Is that  _why_  you revealed it?  
  
“Yes.  With the technology director recaptured, there was no longer a legitimate reason for me to remain here,” War Machine replied, carefully.  
  
Steve nodded, hearing both what was being said and what wasn’t.  
  
“I’m placing you on an indefinite leave of absence,” he decided, “-you did disobey my orders several times, and Stark Industries should thank their lucky stars I don’t dismiss you publicly.  However…”  Steve shot War Machine a tight smile, and reached up to put his hand on the back of a thick steel shoulder-plate,  “-between you and me, you’re welcome to come back here any time, Avenger.”  
  
“Thank you, Captain.  …I’ll keep that in mind.”  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 7:20 PM (same day).  
  
  
_‘The eastern world it is explodin’,  
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’,  
You’re old enough to kill but not for votin’,  
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’-’_  
  
Steve broke the seal on his pack of drawing pencils, and shook four of them out of the cardboard box.    
  
_‘-And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin’,  
But you tell me over and over and over again my friend,   
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction-’ _  
  
He sharpened them, releasing the scent of graphite, charcoal, and cedar.  
  
_‘-Don’t you understand, what I’m trying to say?  
Nn, Can’t you feel the fears that I’m feeling today?   
If the button is pushed, there’s no running away,  
There’ll be no one to save with the world in a grave-’_  
  
India rubber.  Putty.  Paper.  Slipsheet.    
  
_‘-Take a look around you, boy, it’s bound to scare you, boy,  
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,   
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction-’_  
  
Steve borrowed Tony’s right-angle ruler from the long folding table that had mysteriously appeared in the far corner of the kitchen, picking it carefully out of a gleaming array of disassembled hoverboard parts.  
He set the corner a handbreadth from the lower left corner of his paper, and used the whole length of the metal, drawing two straight, bold lines.  Steve pictured his subject in his mind’s eye, a helicopter's canopy, and turned the ruler around, moving it against the first two lines until the proportions of the frame looked right.  He chose his moment, then drew the upper and right-hand sides of the frame in lighter.  Steve set the ruler aside, and began sketching.  
He’d barely begun when the door opened.  Tony came in looking windblown and carrying a full brown paper bag in each arm.   He shut the door with his back.  
  
“Whoo.  It’s got to be almost thirty knots out there…”  
  
He set the bags down on the kitchen counter.  One sounded ceramic, the other more muffled.    
  
_‘-Hate your next-door-neighbour, but don’t forget to say grace,  
And you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend,  
you don’t believe we’re on the eve of-’_  
  
Tony listened, surprised.  He’d been adding records to the three that had survived the fire here and there, but this was one Misty had brought over earlier on Danny’s behalf.   _Barry McGuire’s ‘Eve of Destruction’_  had come along with a blessed infusion of  _Led Zeppelin_ , a couple of  _James Brown_  and  _Jerry Lee Lewis_ singles Tony suspected were actually Luke’s, and the  _The Amboy Dukes’ ‘Journey to the Center of the Mind’_ , which was NOT about exploring meditation states, no matter what Danny had been told at the record store…  
Steve knew  _‘Eve of Destruction’_  from the jukebox though, and in the past he’d never cared for it.  
  
_‘-destruction. mmm, no, no.  
you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction…’_  
  
“Fun day at the office?”  Tony guessed, wryly.  
  
“Yes, actually,” Steve replied seriously, smiling at him.  
  
Tony came over, unsnapping his field jacket.  
  
“I thought you didn’t like this song,” he said, making it a question.  
  
“I do now,” Steve told him.  
  
“-Why?”  Tony asked.  
  
“Because-” Steve reached over for the knotted loop of green paracord that had replaced the jacket’s cloth zipper-pull and unzipped it, “-it’s not real anymore.”  
  
“-What?”  Tony blinked, letting him.  
  
“It’s time has passed.  Think about it,” Steve said, curling his fingers around the lapels of the jacket and drawing Tony down for a kiss.  
  
Snatches of the gritty lyrics in question mixed strangely with the sudden warmth of Steve’s lips on his.  
Three seconds after Steve let him breathe, he had it.  
  
“…Eighteen.  You can vote at eighteen now,” Tony realized, catching his breath.  
  
“Exactly,” Steve smiled.  
  
“It’s  _obsolete_ …”  
  
“Yeah…”  Steve slid his hands around the small of Tony’s back, warm under the envelope of the jacket.  
  
“-Hold that thought,” Tony said, his mouth a little dry.  He strode to the record player, and started the song over.  “- _Now_ …”  
  
-  
  
“You’re really tense…”  Steve observed, rubbing a knot along Tony’s shoulderblade.   
  
“It’s- -been a long week,” Tony pointed out, vaguely.    
  
The fingers of Steve’s other hand shifted, the first two curling a little.    
Tony’s breath caught momentarily, and his hand closed through the short blonde hair at the back of Steve’s neck, on nothing.  
Steve had big hands, smoother-skinned than Tony’s, with a slightly unusual pattern of leathery callous along the fingertips of his right hand from shield-throwing.  Controlling the minute changes in speed, torque, or release angle, that made it fly instead of just fire…  
Steve was good with that hand.  …And with his other one.  
Tony shifted across Steve’s lap impatiently, and pressed his forehead against the top of the blonde’s shoulder, eyes shut.  He -hated- that he couldn’t do much yet.  If he could just concentrate, just-  
  
“-Oh-…”  Tony’s forehead creased, lips just parted.  
  
“Hi,” Steve whispered.  
  
“-Mmm,” Tony murmured, approvingly.  
  
Steve’s hands moved in a pattern that echoed, an asymmetrical counterpoint of greater and lesser force, careful inside and just a little -too- hard across the muscles of his shoulders.    
It was a distraction.  A slow burn.  A promise.  
Tony could feel a slight tremor in Steve’s chest, belying his calm, careful hands.  Tony couldn’t help him.  Not yet.    
Consciously, he evened out his breathing and just -felt- what Steve was doing to him, holding onto the cadence of his breath, and nothing else.  Damn… he was close already, but-   
  
“Nhh.  _-Yeah_ …”  
  
Time narrowed to ‘not now’, but not forever.  
  
-  
  
Steve’s hands gripping low and steady around the base of Tony’s chest, and a feeling that drove the air from his lungs.  A deep shiver that he could almost taste, and Steve’s eyes focused intently up into his.  Fascinated, affectionate, impatient, and  _hungry_  in a way Tony seriously doubted the blonde was aware of.    
This was the edge across which the two men Steve -was- blurred.  
Tony began rocking a little, not really moving yet but not quite able to stay still either…  
Steve shut his eyes, and swore softly under his breath.  
Tony flexed around him, pushing back a bit harder, and smiled down speculatively, eyes lidded.  Should he make Steve elaborate on that statement…?  
  
-No.  …Later, maybe.  
For now he _rode_ , smoothly, hard, and well.    
Tingling, like champagne bubbles along the surface of his skin.  Heat that his body couldn’t contain.  Steve’s hands, plying him.  Stroking, and anchoring him.  Trying to help, and -fucking- their rhythm, and then  _getting_  it, and oh,  _God_ …  
Together now, nothing fancy, strength meeting strength in a rolling snap that set Tony’s teeth on edge, made his breath come in deep, sharp-edged gasps.  Then a shift in the angle, and he was leaning further forward than he meant to.  A strike that grayed out his vision, but didn’t quite finish him…  Two…  
Then Tony’s hands were braced hard around Steve’s upper arms, palms slipping with sweat, and he was arching down, back,  _something_ -  
Steve was rocking up into him now, eyes unfocused,  _searching_ , making the syllables of his name a language…  
And then Steve -touched- him, with  _those_  hands, and Tony lost it with a shout that came back from the bricks, eyes tight shut.  His hips were still moving, he’d forgotten how to stop, or maybe it was Steve moving -him-, and it didn’t matter, he was coming and taking Steve down with him, and at the end it…   
Relief flooded Tony’s system, dropping him.  He slumped forwards, head against his arms on Steve’s chest.  Steve was still trembling slightly, one hand uncurling to stroke Tony’s back and gather him closer as they caught their breath.  
  
“…D’ I break you?”  Tony panted, head still down.  
  
“Nope.  …Try again.”  
  
“-Gimmie a minute,” Tony mumbled happily, without moving.  
  
Steve ran his fingers through the back of Tony’s hair, and smiled.  
  
-


	9. Chapter 9

-

Steve’s loft, 6:28 AM.  
  
  
“-Fuck-…”  Tony gasped.  
  
Steve looked beautiful wet.  The heat of the shower brought out the healthy color of his skin as if he’d just finished a workout, and the water plastered his hair to his skull, darkening the blonde a shade or two.  A smooth comma the color of winter wheat straw hung down over Steve’s left eye, adding the visual impression of a lowered hat-brim to his warm, knowing glance.  
Tony braced his shoulders hard against the tiled wall of the shower, and lowered his head, whimpering a little in the back of his throat.  His left hand dropped to a grab-bar that had been in the shower above his garage, and slid helplessly against the smooth ceramic tiling without finding it.  Tony’s fingers clenched into a fist at his side instead.  
  
City-chlorinated water had dripped into his eyes out of dark fringe that covered his field of vision, and it stung a little.  The thought was peripheral.  Transitory.  Irrelevant.  
Steve was not.  
His hands were everywhere, and in no hurry.  He ran them lightly across the quiet definition of Tony’s stomach, stroked them up the backs of his thighs, brushed the hard crease between Tony’s hip and thigh with his thumb…  
Tony’s breath caught a sharp inhalation that hissed between his teeth.  
  
“Ah-!  Hnnn-nh…”  
  
Steve swallowed around him, and Tony shut his eyes entirely, leaning his head back against the steam-wet tile.    
One of Tony’s hands fell to Steve’s arm, gripping and kneading lightly as he whispered snatches of profane encouragement.  
Steve reached up, fingers tracing the skin around the base of the covered arc reactor in a smooth caress.  He touched a brief constellation of small, irregular scars, almost lost against the more obvious details of Tony’s chest.  The way the upper and lower muscles didn’t shelve so much as blend and layer together.  The hard symmetry of the latex-covered arc itself, and the pale blue glow within, cold and clean like the light of a star.  Small tan nipples- -Steve brushed one firmly with his thumb- -that he’d somehow expected to be darker…    
  
Tony choked slightly and shivered under his hands, fingers tightening against the juncture of Steve’s neck and shoulder.  
Steve liked that noise, that feeling.  He liked how easy they were to draw out, with the right touches, the right codes.  He liked winning, for both of them… and then discovering that there was  _more_.  
Holding Tony in his mouth still felt a little strange, and maybe it always would.  Still, it was something Steve could give, something he could understand.  A delicate balance of pressures, and technique, and care.  A kind of equality between men that needed no explanation, yet still allowed him to watch Tony come completely unglued in his arms.  
It wouldn’t be long now, and Steve loved watching it happen.  
  
Thinking about why brought him to tightly-focused thoughts about art pencils and shading, though.  Tony was his boyfriend, but he had been Steve’s best friend in this modern age  _first_.  Tony was a good man, and a complicated one.  He was also a hero in his own right, because he’d dared to imagine it so, and worked tirelessly to make it true.  
Tony probably wouldn’t like being thought of as a…  
  
Steve’s left arm and hand tightened, pushing Tony’s hips forwards, and he took him in deeper.  It was a swift gesture, just this side of rough…  exciting, and hard to predict, because Steve hadn’t premeditated it.  
  
“GAH-!”  Tony’s eyes opened suddenly, “-Ah!  Yes- yes- Yeahh-!  – _STEEVE!_ _”_  
  
His foot slipped on the white enamel of the tub a little, but Steve’s hands had him.  Tony’s entire body tensed, ecstasy and adrenaline together, playing out in a sudden flush across his face and neck as he finished.    
He raised his hands unsteadily afterwards, still catching his breath, and ran them down over Steve’s smooth, wet hair.  
  
“…Fucking  _hell_ …”  Tony swallowed, barely audible.  
  
Steve released him carefully, and raised his own head, eyes dark and steady.  
Tony ran his fingers through Steve’s hair on both sides.   He kissed the top of Steve’s hair reverently just above his hairline, tasted tap water, and smelled clean shampoo.  …And himself.  Tony licked his lips for a moment, then knelt as well and nuzzled Steve’s right ear.  
  
“That- that was uh…”  Tony trailed off, blinking a little as he waited for the English language to reassert itself.  
  
Steve hugged him under the steady rush of the shower.  
  
“-You’re welcome,” he said, with a smile that could be heard.  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 6:48 AM (same day).  
  
  
“Hel-looo-o?”  Peter called through the door, after knocking a second time.  
  
Steve opened the door as Peter raised his fist to knock again, and looked at him.  
Peter suddenly became aware that he was on eye level with the older man’s mouth, even though Steve was barefoot and he wasn’t.  If anything, Steve with wet hair and a clean white towel wrapped around his waist was  _more_  formidable than usual.  
  
“Um… hi.  -I could go,” Peter reflected, conversationally.  
  
“Good morning Peter,” Steve shook his head, almost laughing, “-you’re already here, you might as well come in,” he stood aside, opening the door wider.  
  
“Okay…”  Peter peered around the loft cautiously as he entered, and Steve shut the door behind him.    
  
Peter heard water running in the bathroom, though there was no sign of breakfast yet.  One of life’s small, passing miseries.  He caught sight of Tony’s cluttered worktable in the far corner, and gravitated there to examine the black and silver components of Harry’s disassembled hoverboard.    
  
Steve glanced over his shoulder in Peter’s direction, then changed quickly into jeans and a clean white t-shirt.  He wasn’t used to paying attention to modesty around other men, really- -the Army had beaten out what little modesty he possessed  _long_  ago.  This morning, however… Steve wasn’t sure if it was just the very-nearly-awkward timing of Peter’s arrival, or the speed with which Peter had zeroed in on Tony’s workbench, but the young man felt more like Tony’s son to him than usual.  
Peter wasn’t touching the hoverboard parts on the bench though, he was just gazing down at them thoughtfully.  
  
“How’s Harry?”  Steve asked, joining Peter in the kitchen and opening the refrigerator door.  
  
“Oh-” Peter blinked and looked up, “-he’s good.  He came home last night with his arm slung.”  
  
“It hasn’t healed yet?”  Steve set a carton of eggs on the counter.  
  
“Mm, yes and no.  It’s moved from messy and bandaged to painful and a good excuse not to do homework,” Peter explained, resisting the urge to perch, perfectly balanced, on the back of a kitchen chair.  
  
“I thought Harry had a typewriter,” Steve teased, taking out a milk carton and setting it with the eggs.  
  
“That’s what -I- said,” Peter began, “-but he’s kind of- -distracted.  I mean, obviously…”    
  
“Well, he’ll get used to it soon enough,” Steve said, shutting the refrigerator door.  
  
-  
  
Tony wandered out in a large bathrobe.  He’d just shaved, and the dark line of his mustache looked crisper than usual.  
  
“Morning, Peter,” Tony smiled, padding past him into the kitchen.  
  
“Hey boss,” Peter greeted him, looking up.  
  
Tony stopped beside the stove, put a hand around the back of Steve’s neck, and kissed him firmly, eyes shut.  
Peter sighed philosophically, and bent down to dig through the small compartment of his backpack, ignoring them.  
  
“Good m-Yeow!”  Steve began and yelped, burning his wrist on the edge of a cast-iron skillet.  
  
“Okay?”  Tony asked.  
  
“OUT,” Steve ordered with an embarrassed sidelong look, pointing.    
  
Tony retreated to the kitchen table with a look of guilty humor.  …Then he went back for a thick stack of mail on the corner, and dropped it on the table between his chair and Peter’s.  
  
“Holy  _crap_ ,” Peter whistled.  
  
Tony snagged a thick manila envelope out of the bottom of the mess, and set it aside.  Together, they sorted through the rest.  Three letters were to Tony personally, Iron Man had four care of the Avengers and one care of Tony, there was one disreputable tabloid speculating on whether Tony had left Iron Man for War Machine… and the remainder of the mail was mostly bills and advertisements.  A surprising number of bills, addressed to a business that had ceased to exist over two weeks ago…  
  
“What were you building?”  Peter asked curiously, tapping the stack of bills from the parts and materials companies.  
  
“ _That_ , is the entrepreneurial spirit of the city of New York in action,” Tony said, adding the electric bill to the top of the pile, “-check the company names and dates against that list of bills you remember paying before the garage burned.”  
  
“Why those gouging, two-faced  _weasels_ -!”  Peter began angrily, as the first three names matched.  
  
“-That’s what I thought,” Tony snorted, unsurprised, “-not that they’re actually doing anything illegal…”  
  
Peter took a black pen out of his backpack, and began drawing a bold strike-through across each duplicate bill.  Tony watched approvingly out of the corner of his eye for the first two, then started opening his personal mail.  
The promising scent of French toast quietly filled the room.  
  
-  
  
“-This one’s from Jarvis,” Tony said, setting his coffee cup down and holding up the handwritten page in question.  
  
“Who?”  Steve asked, peeling an orange without looking at it.  
  
“An- -old friend of mine.  He used to work for me, but he moved back to London after I lost SI,” Tony explained, vaguely.  
  
“He’s a scientist?”  Peter guessed.  
  
“He was my butler, actually,” Tony admitted, smiling wryly.  “-He works for the Carnelian ambassador to Great Britain now.”  
  
“Isn’t Carnelia kind of scary and dictatorial?”  Peter pointed out, uneasily.  
  
“Jarvis isn’t easily frightened,” Tony shrugged, “-and apparently they’re working on it.”  
  
“He sounds like a remarkable man,” Steve acknowledged.  
  
“The best,” Tony agreed, without hesitation.  
  
“Aren’t you going to open that one?”  Peter asked, pointing to the manila envelope at Tony’s elbow, perilously close to a dollop of strawberry jam.  
  
“Oh.  Yeah.  You do the honors,” Tony decided, handing the envelope across the table to Peter.  
  
Peter read the printed return address, and glanced back at him doubtfully.  
  
“Well?”  Tony prompted, impatiently.  
  
Peter slit the top of the envelope with an unused butter knife, and unfolded the stapled white sheets inside.    
The page at the back looked like the bottom third of it was a check, Tony saw.  He reached over and folded the back page up and sideways along the stapled corner, reading the numbers upside-down.  
Then he smiled.  
  
“Congratulations,” Peter read over top of the sheaf of paper, “-your garage is a total loss.”  
  
“Like I haven’t heard -that- before.  All right, we’ve got work to do…” Tony began.  
  
-  
  
Harry and Peter’s apartment, 11:44 PM.  
  
  
Harry reached out to tweak an orchid back into place, and accidentally broke it off the stem.  
  
“Terrific…” he muttered, fishing the damaged flower out of the vase entirely, trying not to disturb the others.    
  
He had the base color, the outline…  he could probably finish it from here, and it would look -almost- right.  
Almost.  
Dammit.  
It would probably be better if he’d done the details instead, ghostly edges and highlights picking out the flower’s shape without giving away its main color.  
Ghost flowers.  Maybe start over.  Do them all like that, just outlines and details, without substance.  Pour out the water and wait a day or two, and paint in the colors of what was left of the bouquet then.  Death, below an after-image of life.  
No.  
This piece was due tomorrow night…  
  
Harry put his paintbrush down, and sat back, studying his painting.  
He didn’t have the patience for this, and his right shoulder was starting to really hurt.  
If only he could paint with his left hand- -he’d tried though, with results that could only be called ‘impressionistic’.  No good for flowers, oils, and realism.  
Harry scowled, increasingly irritated with his subject.  
He  _liked_  flowers.  The smooth, organic perfection.  The way they looked classy, and opened doors.  Colors that burned, and cooled.  Soothed, hinted, and celebrated.  
But now he… couldn’t feel any of that.  
Looking at something that he remembered _should_  have made him happy, Harry was… ambivalent.  If anything, looking at them just made him feel impatient.  Like something he had outgrown.  Something…  
  
Harry seized the paintbrush in his left hand, and swiped a long, quick smear across the canvas horizontally.  
A blurred, greenish-orange line with streaks and smudges of white and chocolate brown.  
An underline to exactly how much this project was pissing him off.  
A project he… …might be able to repair, but which he’d much rather destroy.  
Yes.  
This canvas was screwed anyway.  
Maybe if he could just get this out of his system…  
  
Harry put the brush down, and smeared the center of the design with his fingers.  
Purple, green, yellow, white, swirling together into shades and overtones he couldn’t immediately name.  …Red.  This needed red.  
He took out the metal paint tube, and squeezed out a healthy portion onto his first two fingers, smooth and cool and glowing crimson.  This color had a life, a fire the others lacked.  He smeared it across the top of the canvas and down in a quick swan’s neck curve, highlighting feeling rather than form.  
Blue.  Royal, just deeper than cobalt, more real….  a wide blue lozenge in the center, wisping purple and less knowable colors at the edges, brightening with a smear of blended white in the middle still just grainy enough to detect.  
This background was all wrong.  It just didn’t do, with primary colors.  They needed something harsh, a dividing line just as… not yellow.  Not white, or it would look French, or like a daytime sky-  
Wait.  
Nighttime.  
Black.  Black and battleship gray, like an oil slick across the world.  Now the red and blue made sense.  Were contained, bordered right.  Still too much though…  
  
Several minutes later, Harry was staring at an almost entirely black canvas.  
He smeared on the last of it, and wiped his face with the back of his wrist, staring at the hard design in front of him without seeing the wet, contrasting paint on his left hand.  
Good, but… no.  
He wiped off all the paint he could with the side of his discarded paintbrush, scraping, wiping any trace of either of the former designs as clean as he could.  
The result was… dirty.  Shadows.  Shades in shadows and scraped lines of texture, meaningless, yet speaking in a way that made him hesitate to look at it straight-on.  
  
Harry was tempted to leave it like that, but he decided against it.  It was too loud, too disturbing.  Too much a muddy expression of what he was _feeling_  without really being what he wanted to  _say_ …  
Black was too simple an answer, and red couldn’t exist without blue…  
Harry blacked out the canvas, killing the rest of the paint tube, then made up a palette of red, blue, white, and darkest gray.  
Dark water emerged, and faint reflections on the tops of small waves.  Tall pylons…  
  
-  
  
Avengers Tower, Hank Pym’s lab, 1:28 PM.  
  
  
Steve looked around the room while he waited, hands clasped behind his back.  
He could hear the alien hum of computer banks on one hand, and the subtler, organic whirring of insects, sealed within pristine cages of Plexiglas and tightly-woven wire mesh.  They sounded very close, like the insects were staying in their enclosures voluntarily.  …Maybe they  _were_ , knowing Hank.  
  
The scientist was working over by one of the lab sinks, carefully adding single drops of various chemicals to a densely-packed rack of test tubes, and noting down the results on a clipboard.  Innocent enough.  
Steve had seen a kid with a chemistry set do something similar on television.  
Hank’s test tubes weren’t even smoking… but those were reactive, not active agents.  
Steve remembered what an active agent tasted like.  Something between getting pure carbonation out of a soda fountain without the syrup, the slight choke of chalk dust, and something …sharper.  Dangerous.  Something that burned and numbed at the same time, yet still left a slight tang in his mouth, like powdered lemon soap.  
There had been a time to ask questions, and that hadn’t been it.  
He’d never been the same, though.  
  
Steve studied Hank’s back as the other man worked.  Even through the pale blue collared shirt and white lab coat, the scientist was powerfully built.  Not to the degree that Steve was himself, but even so…   They didn’t look so different, especially from the back.  
What would it have been like to have looked like that from the beginning?  
Steve looked down at his right hand.  Balanced, strong, capable.  He’d worked out that morning at the Avengers gym, and he could feel the difference that made, the way the fibers that held his hand together inside were just a little looser, a little more awake.  That didn’t happen automatically.  Hank didn’t use half of what he had.    
Hank Pym was a scientist.  He didn’t -need- to work out every morning.  From what Steve had gathered, Hank had been casual about PT even as Ant-Man.  
Steve had the desire to reach back through time, and put that right.  Hank was a stubborn man, but Steve felt sure he could have-  
  
“How old is this?”  Hank asked.  
  
“What do you mean?”  Steve blinked, jerked back to the present.  
  
“How long has it been since Harry was exposed to the Green Goblin’s formula?”  Hank clarified, looking over at him.  
  
“I’m- -not sure, exactly,” Steve admitted, “-around three weeks, I think.  Is it important?”  
  
“It could be…”  Hank studied a slight rust-brown precipitate in the bottom of one of the tubes, swirling it between his fingers, then put the tube back in its place on the rack.  
  
-  
  
Downtown Manhattan, the lobby of a bank, 2:31 PM.  
  
  
Tony took the receipt the cashier handed him across the counter, and barely looked at it before folding the slip of paper into his wallet.  
Then he started walking, and didn’t stop for a long time.  He hadn’t meant to start, he just needed the time to think.  
Up through streets with buildings so high they hid the winter sun.  Past steaming grates in the curb, and the shadowed hulks of dumpsters.  Down, to where the streets were brighter, and the light revealed truths that were ugly.  Broken pavement, broken windows, broken people.  They knew him here.  Tony sometimes came to the pawn shops casing for re-usable parts or tools.  He was known.  Familiar.  One of them, neither predator nor prey.  
  
How many of these faces would close, if they knew the number he’d learned earlier?  
How many would resent him for not sharing?  How many would stop giving him information on general principle?  How many would give him that look… like they’d never seen him before?  
The look he got when he tried to explain the physics of a Roman Legionnaire’s armor, or simple astronavigation, or-  
Tony was a mechanic, and a good one.  He was respected for that, and as soon as the garage was rebuilt, he knew most of his customers would return.  …He’d found a Ziploc-bagged note to that effect from one of them already, weighted down with a corner of broken cinder block.  
But Tony had patents to his name too, many of which still belonged to him.  Ideas he’d never had the time, or the facilities, or the venture capital to pursue.  Unknown quantities, any one of which could have been the key to saving-  
Tony broke that train of thought off sharply with an unconscious sigh, hands deep in the pockets of his jacket.  
  
“Hey, wacchit, Mac!”  A collection of cardboard boxes rebuked him.  
  
Tony looked down.  
  
“Oh- I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”  
  
“Yez lookin’ too high, then,” the boxes muttered, “-run over all kinna people like that…”  
  
Tony paused, half-opened his mouth to reply, then closed it and walked on.  The man in the boxes couldn’t have been answering his unspoken questions, he’d just been talking about literal fact.  Tony had literally walked into the man.  Well, a corner of one of the boxes…  
But what if the man in the boxes-  
Suddenly, Tony couldn’t stand not to know.  He retraced his steps.  
An unkempt man with graying hair looked out at him suspiciously from under the edge of the cardboard boxes.  One bloodshot eye closed, and the other seemed to focus more directly on Tony.  
  
“I gotta knife, you know,” the man in the boxes stated.  
  
“I’m sure you do,” Tony agreed, staying out of arm’s reach for the time being, “-but I just wanted to ask you a question.”  
  
“Eh?  Wuzzat then?”  The man asked, with a shadow of curiosity.  
  
Tony crouched down, sitting back on his own heels, elbows on his knees.  They could see each other better from this angle, and Tony saw that the man in the box wasn’t as old as he’d thought.  -About Steve’s age, in fact, if Steve had never been frozen…  
  
“What would you do if you had a million dollars?”  Tony asked doggedly, feeling a bit ridiculous.  
  
The man in the box regarded him for a long, silent moment.  Then he grinned, opening both eyes and arching his shaggy eyebrows.  
  
“-Why, you got that kinnda change?”  
  
“Not exactly, no…”  Tony grinned back, relaxing.  
  
“Well then that’s like wisshin’ for tha moon, ain’t it?”  The man replied shrewdly, closing one eye again.  
  
“You mean it’s never going to happen, so why worry about it?”  Tony asked, secretly disappointed.  
  
“Hell no!  I mean if yez gonna wish fer a pony, try a herd a’mustangs while yer at it.  Ya never know…”  
  
“Huh.  …That’s not bad,” Tony admitted.  
  
“Wuz your name?”  The man asked.  
  
“Tony.”  
  
“M’Lennard.”  
  
“Pleased to meet you,” Tony replied.    
  
They shook hands, Tony’s work-roughened one to Leonard’s ragged brown glove.  Then they let go.  
Leonard’s open eye narrowed thoughtfully.  
  
“I coulda killed yez jus’ now,” he stated.  
  
“-You could’ve tried,” Tony agreed, dryly.  
  
“It ain’t no good around here, Tony.  Yez gotta woman?”  
  
“No…”  Tony said, carefully.  
  
“Yez got annybody?”  Leonard asked.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“G’wan.  Gittoutta here, then,” Leonard illustrated this order with a vague jerk of his chin, “-yez stumblin’ inta stuff an’ y’ain’t got booze anyway.”  
  
“Thank you Leonard,” Tony said, standing.  
  
“Yeah, yeah…”  Leonard coughed a few times, and spat to the side.  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 5:01 PM (same day).  
  
  
_‘In the days of my youth,  
I was told what it means to be a man.  
Now I´ve reached that age-’_  
  
Tony cleared a space near the center of his workbench, and opened his drafting notebook.  
He drew a small oval in the center of the page freehand, and then ruler-straight radial lines out from that shape, one for each idea he had of what to do with the money from the garage.  There were still too many of them…  
  
_‘-I´ve tried to do all those  
Things the best I can.  
No matter how I try   
I find my way to the same old jam-’_  
  
One of Peter’s shorted-out spider-tracers was sitting like a leftover Halloween toy beside a glass jar of hoverboard screws.  Tony picked the small transmitter up, and smirked.  He set it at the center of the page he was working on, right over the oval, then doodled curved lines in between the radial lines, making the useless brainstorming exercise look like a spider web.    
  
_‘-Good times, bad times,  
You know I´ve had my share  
When my woman left home -’_  
  
Tony moved the spider-tracer aside to sketch it in permanently, and- -stopped, his pencil poised.  With or without the spider, the design, the  _network_ remained.  Ideas without a visible focal point, outstretched in every direction.  
  
_‘- With a browneyed man,  
Well, I still don´t seem to care-’_  
  
Tony smiled, the ends of his mustache curving upwards and a new light in his eyes.  He tapped the Spider-tracer approvingly with his pencil, and turned over his drafting notebook to a fresh page.  With a speed born of decision and long premeditation, the clean, simple outlines of a new garage took shape under his hand…  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 3:45 PM.  
  
  
The rich scent of turkey and stuffing was beginning to pervade the long room.  Tony poured himself a few fingers of bourbon, drank off a long swallow of the stuff with great complacency, and finished the rest as he put one of the pies together.  He’d never had much luck with side-dishes, but things that had to be mixed and  _built_ , instead of just heated up and  _presented_ , he could do.  
Steve came back in from setting the table, paused, went back out and tweaked a few things, then put on a jazz record, and stared out the high windows at the darkly overcast sky for a while, arms folded across his chest.  
  
“Steve-?”  Tony called over to him.  
  
“Hm?”  Steve looked back, “-what is it?”  
  
“You tell me.  You’re a million miles away over there,” Tony teased, gently.  
  
Steve sighed, unfolded his arms, and moved to stand nearer the kitchen window.  
  
“I’m worried about Harry,”  Steve admitted,  “-Hank says there’s probably no way to reverse what he did to himself with the Green Goblin’s serum… not now that it’s- -precipitated, I think is the word.  The chemicals are spent, but they’ve already changed the way his body works.  Forever.”  
  
Tony set his empty glass down, and picked up a slice of green apple.  He took a bite and walked over, still chewing.  
  
“Well, between Peter… and you, and me and… Hank Pym… I think Harry could be in far worse hands.”  
  
“Bucky was never given the super soldier serum, you know,” Steve stated, hands clasped behind his back.  
  
“Harry wasn’t given the Goblin serum either,” Tony argued, “-he  _stole_  it from his father.“  
  
”-Yes.  Norman is… still having a hard time with that, from what Dr. Faustus over at SHIELD tells me,” Steve noted, uncomfortably.  
  
“He’s not coming back anytime soon, is he,” Tony stated.  
  
"No.”  
  
“It’s a good thing this didn’t happen when Harry was younger,” Tony reflected.  
  
"He’s nineteen, Tony,” Steve reminded him.  
  
"So were you,” Tony said, looking at him sidelong.  
  
"I can’t do this,” Steve blurted out, “-I want to, but-”  
  
“I’m sorry, what…?"  Tony blinked.  
  
"I can’t be for Harry what you are to Peter.  I’m not sure that piece of myself is  _left_ , much less…”  
  
_It’s been less than two years since he lost Bucky, not counting the ice,_  Tony remembered suddenly.  
  
“You don’t have to be.  Norman Osborne is messed up, not dead.  Besides, can you imagine the  _fit_  Peter would throw if he thought he wasn’t going to be an only student anymore?"  Tony smirked.  
  
Steve had to smile, at that.  
  
"It might be good for him, you know,” Steve suggested wryly.  
  
"Oh, I’m going to bring that up at the  _worst_  times…"  Tony promised, grinning.  
  
-  
  
There was a knock at the door.  
Tony got it, leaving Peter to read Harry the instructions for the new jukebox.  -Since he was going to tear the whole thing apart and rebuild it from the fairings up anyway, Tony figured he’d let them play.    
Steve was halfway to the door when it opened, and he stopped short, momentarily at a loss for words.  
  
“Jarvis, you made it!”  Tony cried happily, waving his guest inside, and instantly looping an arm around his shoulders.  
  
“A very good evening to you, and… circumstances permitted,”  Jarvis shrugged,  “-thanksgiving is an  _American_  holiday, after all, and it has been…”  Jarvis trailed off, and he and the man he’d practically raised looked at each other for a long moment.  
  
They hadn’t been face to face like this since the day Jarvis had come forwards with a warning about Sunset Bain and been fired for his troubles, and though he and Tony had patched things up through a series of letters after Tony’s return from Vietnam…  
  
“It’s good to see you again,” Tony said, simply.  
  
Jarvis’s fond smile was quiet and contained.  He was slightly balder than when Tony had seen him last, but he’d aged well, and the solid lines of the RAF boxing champion Jarvis had once been were not altogether lost beneath the rounded corners.  
  
“Likewise, sir.”  
  
“-Just Tony,” Tony smiled back.  
  
“You were a captain, were you not?”  Jarvis retorted.  
  
“I- wait, I haven’t even introduced you- -Jarvis, this is Steve Rogers, Steve, this is Edwin Jarvis, the last man in the world you should make an enemy of.”  
  
“Delighted, I’m sure,” said Jarvis, offering Steve his hand.  
  
“Pleased to meet you,” Steve replied, shaking hands with him.  
  
Peter had gravitated over to the group by now, and for once it was Harry who hung back a step, resisting the urge to still his hands by shoving them deep in his pockets of his cords.    
Tony spotted Peter, dropped a hand on his shoulder, and propelled him gently but firmly in Jarvis’s direction.  
  
“Jarvis, this is my associate Peter Parker.  Peter, Edwin Jarvis.”  
  
“Um.  Hi-”  Peter blinked, half surprised at being suddenly promoted to ‘associate’, and half trying to figure out why meeting a semi-old-guy who used to be Tony’s butler back in  _the time before_ felt like a bigger deal than meeting Steve had.    
  
Jarvis smiled in a way that made Peter suddenly want to ask the older man for a glass of milk.  He contained the urge, and shook Jarvis’s hand.  
  
“I… pleased to meet you.”  
  
“Likewise,” Jarvis agreed kindly, as if Peter’s deer in the headlights moment earlier hadn’t happened.  
  
Steve watched as Harry was dragged into the huddle and introduced as well, as Peter’s best friend.  Harry’s good manners were automatic, the trained, insincere camaraderie of New York high society, overlaying a very young and nervous eagerness to please.  Jarvis handled the young man with both care and skill.  -But then, if War Machine had dropped him the first time, Harry wouldn’t have been there at all…  
Steve folded his arms, smiling quietly.  
  
-  
  
Steve’s loft, 6:04 AM.  1973.  
  
  
“Tony, wake up.”  
  
“…*…Uh?”  Tony responded, unconvinced.  
  
“You should see this,” Steve said, climbing back onto the bed and sitting up cross-legged against the headboard, newspaper in hand.    
  
Tony half propped himself up on one elbow and read over Steve’s knee, squinting against the glow of the bedside lamp.  
  
“President Nixon… -what?”  He stared, waking up fast, “-suspension of all U.S. offensive action in North Viet- …oh my god.”  Tony broke off, and swallowed.  
  
Steve watched Tony’s reaction sidelong, and said nothing.  Tony took one side of the newspaper from him and read more, occasionally mouthing a word like ‘cease-fire’, or ‘linebacker’, and muttering under his breath.  
  
“What does this mean?”  Steve asked, when Tony paused and looked to the side.  
  
Tony’s eyes flicked up to meet Steve’s quickly, almost guiltily.  He took a steadying breath, then sighed and answered the question, his voice flat.  
  
“The war’s over.  We just lost.”  
  
Steve’s breath caught in spite of himself, and he glanced down at the bold, black, printed headline as if it had just bitten him.  Tony shut his eyes, and smiled bitterly.  
  
“Are you sure?”  Steve frowned.  
  
“Oh yeah,” Tony nodded, looking up again, “-they’ll milk this for as long as they can, but it’s over.  …I’m sorry,” he ran a hand back through his sleep-spiked hair.  
  
“What for?”  Steve asked.  
  
_I’m sorry you had to see this,_  Tony thought.  
  
“I just… I wanted to win,” Tony admitted, gesturing at the newspaper, “-I knew it probably wouldn’t turn out that way, but I- …America’s not supposed to lose, you know?”  
  
Steve opened his mouth to say that it didn’t matter, and couldn’t do it.  
  
“-Do you remember the McCarthy hearings?”  He asked, instead.  
  
“Not very well,” Tony admitted.  
  
“I read all about it after I woke up.  They ran Charlie Chaplin out of America, Tony…  Charlie  _Chaplain_.  As far as I’m concerned, that’s the closest America came to really losing.”  
  
“ _Veritas vos liberabit_ ,” Tony quoted wryly.  
  
“Yes.  And so long as people are still free to  _tell_  that truth this still IS America, win or lose,” Steve said, firmly.  
  
“You’re just saying that because the North Vietnamese never actually invaded US soil,” Tony accused, without rancor.  
  
Steve frowned.  
  
“…How did  _you_ want this war to end?”  He asked.  
  
“-I don’t know,” Tony admitted, drawing his knees up and folding his arms over top of them, “-after what happened during the Tet Offensive, I don’t think there was a way to win it…”  
  
Neither one spoke for a long moment.  
  
“Well…”  Steve began, putting an arm around him, “-welcome home, Captain.”  
  
“…You too,” Tony said after a pause, leaning into the contact a little.  
  
“Do you have any idea what peace is going to be like?  It’s been a while…”  Steve admitted.  
  
“Judging from the offer Titanium Man made me the other day?”  Tony said, raising an eyebrow significantly, “-interesting.”  
  
“Offer?  What do you mean?”  
  
“Political asylum and a nice datcha within driving distance of Moscow if I defected,” Tony grinned, “-I had to turn him down.”  
  
“…Do you get scouted by a lot of communists?”  Steve asked, concerned.  
  
“You have _no_  idea,” Tony snorted, deciding not to mention Natasha specifically, “-it’s the red in my armor.  They-”  
  
-  
  
The ruins of the Iron Horse Garage, 10:10 AM.  
  
  
“Come on man, get this show on the road…”  Luke said, weighing a heavy duty sledgehammer in one hand impatiently.  
  
“Friends help you move,” Peter quoted philosophically, “- _real_  friends help you move rubble.”  
  
“Get that camera outta my face, boy,” Luke advised.  
  
“Right-o,” Peter said agreeably, moving a little closer to Steve and the others.  
  
Tony flexed his fingers within his gauntlets, hearing the familiar sliding metallic crunch, and feeling the minute, bone-deep vibrations of actuating servos.  His targeting system picked out the sidearm of an off-duty cop in the small crowd that had gathered to watch, and identified it as a Luger.  Unusual, but there were hundreds of such statistical anomalies, if one knew where to look…  
  
He squared his shoulders and walked out onto the uneven ground where the Iron Horse Garage used to stand.  Near the center there was a fused patch of gritty glass, worn almost clean by the wind and cold spring rain.  Tony stopped in the middle of it, and in a single motion, dropped his right knee and shattered the ground with his fist in a glittering explosion.  
  
—  
  
THE END.


End file.
